History of chemistry element among the fractions that resulted. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. On December 21, 1898, the Curies detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende. They presented this finding to the French Academy of Sciences on December 26, proposing that the new element be called radium. The Curies then went to work isolating polonium and radium from naturally occurring compounds to prove that they were new elements. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram
Polonium coolant. The longer-lived isotopes of polonium, Po and Po, can be formed by proton or deuteron bombardment of bismuth using a cyclotron. Other more neutron-rich and more unstable isotopes can be formed by the irradiation of platinum with carbon nuclei. Polonium-based sources of alpha particles were produced in the former Soviet Union. Such sources were applied for measuring the thickness of industrial coatings via attenuation of alpha radiation. Because of intense alpha radiation, a one-gram sample of Po will spontaneously heat up to above generating about 140 watts of power. Therefore, Po is used as an atomic heat source to