Isotopes of krypton

• The isotopic composition refers to that in air.

Krypton-81

Radioactive krypton-81 is the product of spallation reactions with cosmic rays striking gases present in the Earth atmosphere, along with the six stable or nearly stable krypton isotopes.^[9] Krypton-81 has a half-life of about 229,000 years.

Krypton-81 is used for dating ancient (50,000- to 800,000-year-old) groundwater and to determine their residence time in deep aquifers. One of the main technical limitations of the method is that it requires the sampling of very large volumes of water: several hundred liters or a few cubic meters of water. This is particularly challenging for dating pore water in deep clay aquitards with very low hydraulic conductivity.^[10]

Krypton-85

Krypton-85 has a half-life of about 10.75 years. This isotope is produced by the nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear weapons testing and in nuclear reactors, as well as by cosmic rays. An important goal of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 was to eliminate the release of such radioisotopes into the atmosphere, and since 1963 much of that krypton-85 has had time to decay. However, it is inevitable that krypton-85 is released during the reprocessing of fuel rods from nuclear reactors.^{[citation needed]}

Atmospheric concentration

The atmospheric concentration of krypton-85 around the North Pole is about 30 percent higher than that at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station because nearly all of the world's nuclear reactors and all of its major nuclear reprocessing plants are located in the northern hemisphere, and also well-north of the equator.^[11]To be more specific, those nuclear reprocessing plants with significant capacities are located in the United States, the United Kingdom, the French Republic, the Russian Federation, Mainland China (PRC), Japan, India, and Pakistan.

Krypton-86

Krypton-86 was formerly used to define the meter from 1960 until 1983, when the definition of the meter was based on the wavelength of the 606 nm (orange) spectral line of a krypton-86 atom.^[12]

Others

All other radioisotopes of krypton have half-lives of less than one day, except for krypton-79, a positron emitter with a half-life of about 35.0 hours.

Sources

• Isotope masses from:
  • Audi, Georges; Bersillon, Olivier; Blachot, Jean; Wapstra, Aaldert Hendrik (2003), "The NUBASE evaluation of nuclear and decay properties", Nuclear Physics A, 729: 3–128, Bibcode:2003NuPhA.729....3A, doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2003.11.001
• Isotopic compositions and standard atomic masses from:
  • de Laeter, John Robert; Böhlke, John Karl; De Bièvre, Paul; Hidaka, Hiroshi; Peiser, H. Steffen; Rosman, Kevin J. R.; Taylor, Philip D. P. (2003). "Atomic weights of the elements. Review 2000 (IUPAC Technical Report)". Pure and Applied Chemistry. 75 (6): 683–800. doi:10.1351/pac200375060683.
  • Wieser, Michael E. (2006). "Atomic weights of the elements 2005 (IUPAC Technical Report)". Pure and Applied Chemistry. 78 (11): 2051–2066. doi:10.1351/pac200678112051.
• "News & Notices: Standard Atomic Weights Revised". International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. 19 October 2005.
• Half-life, spin, and isomer data selected from the following sources.
  • Audi, Georges; Bersillon, Olivier; Blachot, Jean; Wapstra, Aaldert Hendrik (2003), "The NUBASE evaluation of nuclear and decay properties", Nuclear Physics A, 729: 3–128, Bibcode:2003NuPhA.729....3A, doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2003.11.001
  • National Nuclear Data Center. "NuDat 2.x database". Brookhaven National Laboratory.
  • Holden, Norman E. (2004). "11. Table of the Isotopes". In Lide, David R. (ed.). CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (85th ed.). Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-8493-0485-9.

• Brookhaven National Laboratory: Krypton-101 information Archived 2017-10-18 at the Wayback Machine