Synthetic radioisotope

A synthetic radioisotope is a radionuclide that is not found in nature: no natural process or mechanism exists which produces it, or it is so unstable that it decays away in a very short period of time. Most known radioisotopes are synthetically made; only 84 out of over 3,000 radioisotopes are found in nature.

The first synthetic radioisotope was phosphorus-30, which was produced in 1934 by Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie using aluminum foil and a polonium source . The two won the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery. The discovery of artificial radioactivity enabled the development of nuclear weapons based on plutonium-239, including the Fat Man atomic bomb.

In the modern day, synthetic radioisotopes have many other applications. They are used in medical imaging (such as technetium-99m), radiotherapy, nuclear energy sources (plutonium-239), and ionization-type smoke detectors (americium-241). These synthetic radioisotopes are manufactured in nuclear reactors using neutron irradiation, and in particle accelerators using charged particles.

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