Californium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Cf and atomic number 98. It was first synthesized in 1950 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory by bombarding curium with alpha particles. It is an actinide element, the sixth transuranium element to be synthesized, and has the second-highest atomic mass of all elements that have been produced in amounts large enough to see with the naked eye. It was named after the university and the U.S. state of California.
The 60-inch-diameter (1.52 m) cyclotron used to first synthesize californium
Fifty-ton shipping cask built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory which can transport up to 1 gram of 252Cf. Large and heavily shielded transport containers are needed to prevent the release of highly radioactive material in case of normal and hypothetical accidents.
Curium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Cm and atomic number 96. This transuranic actinide element was named after eminent scientists Marie and Pierre Curie, both known for their research on radioactivity. Curium was first intentionally made by the team of Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James, and Albert Ghiorso in 1944, using the cyclotron at Berkeley. They bombarded the newly discovered element plutonium with alpha particles. This was then sent to the Metallurgical Laboratory at University of Chicago where a tiny sample of curium was eventually separated and identified. The discovery was kept secret until after the end of World War II. The news was released to the public in November 1947. Most curium is produced by bombarding uranium or plutonium with neutrons in nuclear reactors – one tonne of spent nuclear fuel contains ~20 grams of curium.
Curium
Glenn T. Seaborg
The 60-inch (150 cm) cyclotron at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, in August 1939.
Several isotopes of curium were detected in the fallout from the Ivy Mike nuclear test.