For decades, deep space exploration has depended on a handful of obscure isotopes quietly heating small nuclear batteries on robotic probes. Now a different, even less familiar element is moving to ...

A newly proposed approach aids chemical studies of rare, toxic, radioactive, and precious isotopes by requiring 1,000 times less material. Studying radioactive materials is very difficult due to the ...

Radioisotope power systems (RPS) keep spacecraft going with nuclear batteries. Until now, RPS operated using a plutonium isotope, but researchers have found that an isotope of americium could keep ...

Writing in Nature, Zhang et al. 1 provide a rare atomic-level glimpse of a notoriously dangerous radioactive element, americium (Am), in its highest oxidation state. The authors used a water-soluble ...