Trace quantities also originate from natural fission of uranium-238. Inneholder radioaktive stoffer", "Cesium 137 now traced back to the property's garage and parts of its basement premises - Tiedote-en - STUK", "Cesium-137 contamination at STUK's premises in March 2016", NLM Hazardous Substances Databank – Cesium, Radioactive, Cesium-137 dirty bombs by Theodore Liolios, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caesium-137&oldid=990271557, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2020, Articles containing potentially dated statements from November 2015, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 23 November 2020, at 19:37. The remainder directly populates the ground state of barium-137, which is stable. [16], Accidental ingestion of caesium-137 can be treated with Prussian blue, which binds to it chemically and reduces the biological half-life to 30 days.[17]. If you mean the reaction equation it is 2Cs + 2H2O --> 2CsOH + H2 It is believed that the capsule, originally a part of a measurement device, was lost in the late 1970s and ended up mixed with gravel used to construct the building in 1980. Large amounts of cesium can decrease potassium levels in the body. It has been measured in the surface layer down to 200 meters and south of the current area down to 400 meters. These elements react violently with water, and the reactions get more violent the heavier the metal gets. As an almost purely man-made isotope, caesium-137 has been used to date wine and detect counterfeits[7] and as a relative-dating material for assessing the age of sedimentation occurring after 1945. In April 2011, elevated levels of caesium-137 were also being found in the environment after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disasters in Japan. Cesium forms a number of mercury amalgams. Caesium-137 in the environment is substantially anthropogenic (human-made). It is among the most problematic of the short-to-medium-lifetime fission products because it easily moves and spreads in nature due to the high water solubility of caesium's most common chemical compounds, which are salts. [citation needed] This corresponds to a contamination of 1 mg/km² of caesium-137, totaling about 500 grams deposited over all of Germany. Over 9 years, two families had lived in the apartment. [14], Important researches have shown a remarkable concentration of 137-Cs in the exocrine cells of the pancreas, which are those most affected by cancer (Nelson et al., 1961). These include hydrothermal blasting. [5] In medicine, it is used in radiation therapy. This led to four confirmed deaths and several serious injuries from radiation contamination. Because of the increased specific volume of cesium, as compared with the lighter alkali metals, there is a lesser tendency for it to form alloy systems with other metals. Caesium-137 is produced from the nuclear fission of plutonium and uranium, and decays into barium-137. [citation needed]. An investigation by the agency traced the source to a building from which STUK and a radioactive waste treatment company operate. In small amounts, it is used to calibrate radiation-detection equipment. [25] Surface soils and sediments are also dated by measuring the activity of 137Cs. [36], "Cesium 137" redirects here. A contract crew was transferring the caesium from the lab to a truck when the powder was spilled. Caesium-137 is not widely used for industrial radiography because it is hard to obtain a very high specific activity material with a well defined (and small shape) as caesium from used nuclear fuel contains stable cesium and also long lived Cs-135. Water pills (Diuretic drugs) interacts with CESIUM. Caesium-137 (13755Cs), or radiocaesium, is a radioactive isotope of caesium which is formed as one of the more common fission products by the nuclear fission of uranium-235 and other fissionable isotopes in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. By the time the capsule was discovered, 6 residents of the building had died from leukemia and 17 more had received varying doses of radiation. By observing the characteristic gamma rays emitted by this isotope, one can determine whether the contents of a given sealed container were made before or after the first atomic bomb explosion (Trinity test, 16 July 1945), which spread some of it into the atmosphere, quickly distributing trace amounts of it around the globe. Caesium is a curious alkali metal known to be extremely reactive and super-explosive when it comes into contact with water - even at temperatures of -116 °C (−177 °F). A large emitting volume will harm the image quality in radiography. [9], Caesium-137 reacts with water, producing a water-soluble compound (caesium hydroxide). This caused some caesium-137 from a measuring instrument to be included with eight truckloads of scrap metal on its way to a steel mill, where the radioactive caesium was melted down into the steel. In the Goiânia accident of 1987, an improperly disposed of radiation therapy system from an abandoned clinic in Goiânia, Brazil, was removed then cracked to be sold in junkyards, and the glowing caesium salt sold to curious, unadvised buyers. Caesium-137, along with other radioactive isotopes caesium-134, iodine-131, xenon-133, and strontium-90, were released into the environment during nearly all nuclear weapon tests and some nuclear accidents, most notably the Chernobyl disaster and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Caesium is an Alkaline Earth Metal, categorized by their one valence electron. [31], In March 2015, the Norwegian University of Tromsø lost 8 radioactive samples including samples of caesium-137, americium-241, and strontium-90. [26][27] In Scandinavia, some reindeer and sheep exceeded the Norwegian legal limit (3000 Bq/kg) 26 years after Chernobyl. [30], In 2009, a Chinese cement company (in Tongchuan, Shaanxi Province) was demolishing an old, unused cement plant and did not follow standards for handling radioactive materials.