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Isotopes of europium
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Naturally occurring europium (63Eu) is composed of two isotopes, 151Eu and 153Eu, with 153Eu being the most abundant (52.2% natural abundance). While 153Eu is observationally stable, 151Eu was found in 2007 to be unstable and undergo alpha decay;[4][5] its measured half-life of 4.6 × 1018 years corresponds to 1 alpha decay per two minutes per kilogram of natural europium, so for practical purposes it can be considered stable. Besides the natural radioisotope 151Eu, 36 artificial radioisotopes have been characterized, with the most stable being 150Eu with a half-life of 36.9 years, 152Eu with a half-life of 13.517 years, 154Eu with a half-life of 8.593 years, and 155Eu with a half-life of 4.742 years. The majority of the remaining radioactive isotopes, which range from 130Eu to 170Eu, have half-lives that are less than 12.2 seconds. This element also has 18 metastable isomers, with the most stable being 150mEu (t1/2 12.8 hours), 152m1Eu (t1/2 9.3116 hours) and 152m5Eu (t1/2 95.8 minutes).
The primary decay mode before the most abundant stable isotope, 153Eu, is electron capture, and the primary mode after is beta decay. The primary decay products before 153Eu are isotopes of samarium and the primary products after are isotopes of gadolinium.
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List of isotopes
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- mEu – Excited nuclear isomer.
- ( ) – Uncertainty (1σ) is given in concise form in parentheses after the corresponding last digits.
- # – Atomic mass marked #: value and uncertainty derived not from purely experimental data, but at least partly from trends from the Mass Surface (TMS).
- Bold half-life – nearly stable, half-life longer than age of universe.
- # – Values marked # are not purely derived from experimental data, but at least partly from trends of neighboring nuclides (TNN).
- Modes of decay:
α: Alpha decay β+: Positron emission EC: Electron capture β−: Beta decay IT: Isomeric transition p: Proton emission - Bold italics symbol as daughter – Daughter product is nearly stable.
- Bold symbol as daughter – Daughter product is stable.
- ( ) spin value – Indicates spin with weak assignment arguments.
- Order of ground state and isomer is uncertain.
- Believed to undergo α decay to 149Pm with a half-life over 5.5×1017 years
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Europium-155
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Europium-155 is a fission product with a half-life of 4.74 years and has a maximum decay energy of 252 keV. Because of its position on the high-mass end of the yield curve, it has a low fission product yield, about half of one percent as much as the most abundant fission products.
155Eu's large neutron capture cross section means that most of the small amount produced is destroyed in the course of the nuclear fuel's burnup. Yield, decay energy, and half-life are all far less than that of 137Cs and 90Sr, so 155Eu is not a significant contributor to nuclear waste.
Some 155Eu is also produced by successive neutron captures on 153Eu and 154Eu, whose direct fission yield is extremely small as its mass chain stops at 154Sm. However, the high cross sections, and even higher for 155 than 154, mean that both 155Eu and 154Eu are destroyed faster than they are produced. See the table below for numeric details on this process.
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See also
Daughter products other than europium
References
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