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Samarium-149 is an observationally stable isotope of samarium (predicted to decay, ... Because samarium-149 is not radioactive and is not removed by decay, it ...
Samarium-149 (149 Sm) is an observationally stable isotope of samarium (predicted to decay, but no decays have ever been observed, giving it a half-life at least several orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe), and a product of the decay chain from the fission product 149 Nd (yield 1.0888%).
Because samarium-149 is not radioactive and is not removed by decay, it presents problems somewhat different from those encountered with xenon-135. The equilibrium concentration (and thus the poisoning effect) builds to an equilibrium value during reactor operation in about 500 hours (about three weeks), and since samarium-149 is stable, the ...
Samarium-149 is the second most important neutron poison in nuclear reactor physics. Samarium-151, produced at lower yields, is the third most abundant medium-lived fission product but emits only weak beta radiation. Both have high neutron absorption cross sections, so that much of them produced in a reactor are later destroyed there by neutron ...
Other fission products, such as xenon-135 and samarium-149, have a high neutron absorption cross section. Since a nuclear reactor must balance neutron production and absorption rates, fission products that absorb neutrons tend to "poison" or shut the reactor down; this is controlled with burnable poisons and control rods.
Nonradioactive 133 Cs capturing a neutron and becoming 134 Cs, which is radioactive with a half-life of 2 years; Many of the fission products with mass 147 or greater such as 147 Pm, 149 Sm, 151 Sm, and 155 Eu have significant cross sections for neutron capture, so that one heavy fission product atom can undergo multiple successive neutron ...
Stable nuclides are isotopes of a chemical element whose nucleons are in a configuration that does not permit them the surplus energy required to produce a radioactive emission. The nuclei of such isotopes are not radioactive and unlike radionuclides do not spontaneously undergo radioactive decay . [ 1 ]
A further 10 nuclides, platinum-190, samarium-147, lanthanum-138, rubidium-87, rhenium-187, lutetium-176, thorium-232, uranium-238, potassium-40, and uranium-235 have half-lives between 7.0 × 10 8 and 4.83 × 10 11 years, which means they have experienced at least 0.5% depletion since the formation of the Solar System about 4.6 × 10 9 years ...