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This topic is created to explore potential uses of technetium. This element has no stable isotopes. Tc-99 is a pure beta emitter, with a half-life of 211,000 years. Tc-99 is 6.1% of fission product yield from thermal fission of 235U. About 60kg of Tc-99 are produced by a 1GWe reactor each year.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technetium-99
Whilst its radioactivity has so far limited applications, technetium does have some really interesting properties and could have useful applications. It is the best catalyst by far for dehydrogenation of alkanes. On Mars this will have applications in chemical industry, converting alkanes into olefins, i.e methane into ethylene. Ethylene will be the feedstock for production of polymers. It will also be an important precurser for fluorocarbons, which will be produced for terraforming.
Soviet research also suggested that technetium would outperform ruthenium and iron as a catalyst for ammonia production from nitrogen and hydrogen. We need ammonia on Mars for the same reason we do here on Earth. It is fixed nitrogen and allows amino acids to be produced.
Technetium is sometimes added to steels to make them corrosion resistant. This is another application we will exploit on Mars, especially for nuclear systems, where aqueous coolants are radioactive anyway. A small quantity of technetium added to steel, will completely protect it from corrosion in a closed system.
At present, most technetium is contained within spent nuclear fuel. Some has been seperated at reprocessing plants. But the plan seems to be to bury it as waste or transmute it into stable Ru-100. A better option wouod be to seperate it and put it to use as a catalyst. Interestingly, Tc-99 decays into stable Ru-99. This has similar, though not as favourable, catalytic properties as technetium.
Last edited by Calliban (2024-01-06 18:20:45)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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For Calliban re new topic!
It is good to see another element honored with it's own topic.
I'm assuming we already have at least one such topic, but I don't actually recall seeing one.
Hydrogen has 20 topics, but they all seem to be related, rather than directly about the element itself.
Helium has no topics.
Lithium has three.
Berylium has no topics, but Boron has one.
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Thanks for showing some of the properties of Technetium that make it useful
(th)
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On Mars, there will be strong incentives for every process to be efficient. I think it highly likely that the Martian solution to nuclear waste will involve seperating the spent fuel isotopes and putting them to use. Technetium will have uses in chemical industry. Sr-90 and Cs-137, will both be used in RTGs. Noble metals will be seperated and used to coat reactor internals, greatly reducing corrosion.
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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