plutonium244

Plutonium-244 (Pu-244) is a radioactive isotope of plutonium with a mass number of 244. It is a synthetic nuclide, not found in detectable quantities in nature, and is produced in nuclear reactors and high-energy experiments. Small amounts may appear as trace impurities in nuclear materials after irradiation.

Pu-244 has a half-life of about 80.8 million years. It decays primarily by alpha emission to uranium-240. The alpha decay pathway is the dominant mode, with spontaneous fission being negligible in its decay scheme.

In terms of occurrence, Pu-244 is not a primordial nuclide and is present on Earth only in trace quantities arising from human activities or from rare astrophysical processes. It is also of interest in astrophysics because Pu-244 is believed to be produced in stellar environments through rapid neutron capture (the r-process). The detection or inference of Pu-244 in primitive meteorites has been used to study the timing of nucleosynthetic events preceding the formation of the solar system.

Applications and safety considerations are driven by its long half-life and strong alpha emission. Pu-244 is used primarily in scientific research and calibration studies, and as a subject in radiochemical and cosmochemical investigations. It is handled only in specialized facilities with appropriate containment and regulatory controls due to the radiological hazards associated with ingestion or inhalation. Because of its scarcity and radioactivity, Pu-244 does not have practical energy-generation applications.