Isotopes of caesium

Caesium (Cs) has at least 39 known isotopes, which is more than any other element except francium. The atomic masses of these isotopes range from 112 to 151. Even though this element has a large number of isotopes, it has only one naturally occurring stable isotope, ¹³³Cs. Most of the other isotopes have half-lives from a few days to fractions of a second. The radiogenic isotope ¹³⁷Cs has been used in hydrologic studies, analogous to the use of ³H. ¹³⁷Cs is produced from the detonation of nuclear weapons and is produced in nuclear power plants, and was released to the atmosphere most notably from the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. It's because this isotope (¹³⁷Cs) is one of the numerous products of fission, directly issue from the fission of a uranium core.

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Beginning in 1945 with the commencement of nuclear testing, ¹³⁷Cs was released into the atmosphere where it is absorbed readily into solution and is returned to the surface of the earth as a component of radioactive fallout. Once ¹³⁷Cs enters the ground water, it is deposited on soil surfaces and removed from the landscape primarily by particle transport. As a result, the input function of these isotopes can be estimated as a function of time. Caesium-137 has a half-life of 30.17 years. It decomposes to barium-137m (a short-lived product of decay) then to a form of nonradioactive barium.

Standard atomic mass: 132.9054519(2) u

Table

Notes

• Values marked # are not purely derived from experimental data, but at least partly from systematic trends. Spins with weak assignment arguments are enclosed in parentheses.
• Uncertainties are given in concise form in parentheses after the corresponding last digits. Uncertainty values denote one standard deviation, except isotopic composition and standard atomic mass from IUPAC which use expanded uncertainties.

References

• Isotope masses from Ame2003 Atomic Mass Evaluation by G. Audi, A.H. Wapstra, C. Thibault, J. Blachot and O. Bersillon in Nuclear Physics A729 (2003).
• Isotopic compositions and standard atomic masses from Atomic weights of the elements. Review 2000 (IUPAC Technical Report). Pure Appl. Chem. Vol. 75, No. 6, pp. 683-800, (2003) and Atomic Weights Revised (2005).
• Half-life, spin, and isomer data selected from these sources. Editing notes on this article's talk page.
  • Audi, Bersillon, Blachot, Wapstra. The Nubase2003 evaluation of nuclear and decay properties, Nuc. Phys. A 729, pp. 3-128 (2003).
  • National Nuclear Data Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory. Information extracted from the NuDat 2.1 database (retrieved Sept. 2005).
  • David R. Lide (ed.), Norman E. Holden in CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 85th Edition, online version. CRC Press. Boca Raton, Florida (2005). Section 11, Table of the Isotopes.