In 2004, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) team in Dubna, Moscow Oblast, Russia planned an experiment to synthesize (create) element 117. It is called "element 117" because the number of protons in its atom is 117. To do this, they needed to fuse the elements berkelium (element 97) and calcium (element 20). However, the American team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the only producer of berkelium in the world, had stopped making berkelium for a while. So, they synthesized the element 118 first using californium (element 98) and calcium.