I expect the real chemists will already be able to tell, I'm on a late night bender going down the nuclear fission rabbit hole. I am no more a chemist than anyone else who took chemistry in college and barely passed. But I thought the number after an element was the total number of protons and neutrons in it, and when you have different amounts of neutrons, you get isotopes. So since we aren't adding or subtracting a proton, I thought adding a neutron to Uranium-238 would result in another, albeit man-made, isotope of Uranium. Long story short, why is it called Plutonium?
Yes, I did come up with this idea after looking up those radiation-eating fungi from Chernobyl.
Yes, I know the mechanism through which they eat radiation is still poorly understood and is probably not very efficient.
Still, though, living creatures need (relatively) very little energy to survive. A human being - already quite a large creature - needs only 100 watts at rest. Most RTGs on space probes can easily do ten times that, and they themselves aren't very efficient either.
https://preview.redd.it/s0eqprrrqnk61.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25eb4939835cc2b70d14ca993c422156a7a9d318
We see tons of pictures of other elements but there are every few of these, espically plutonium.
I have always believed that radioactive metals glowed green but turns out they don't and that saddens me lol. But could the reason that plutonium is unstable or does it break cameras or something?
If anyone knows where I can find more images , espically plutonium other then the ones that are already on google please let me know.
I'm sorry If this does not long belong here just let me know and il delete it.
I have been researching radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) and got stuck on why the decay releasing alpha particles leads it to being hot? also why do RTG need fins to dissipate the heat when we are trying to convert it to energy?
Edit: Thanks for all the answers, after watching The Martian for the fifth time I got really interested in the mechanics of it heat production when he digs up the chuck of (what I assume is) plutonium
Seems it would make sense. Say you can solve the nuclear "waste" crisis with technology proven to work in the past and people generally throw money at you.
