Isotopes of chlorine Isotopes of chlorine Chlorine (Cl) has 25 isotopes with mass numbers ranging from Cl to Cl and 2 isomers (Cl and Cl). There are two principal stable isotopes, Cl (75.78%) and Cl (24.22%), giving chlorine a standard atomic weight of 35.45. The longest-lived radioactive isotope is Cl, which has a half-life of 301,000 years. All other isotopes have half-lives under 1 hour, many less than one second. The shortest-lived are Cl and Cl, with half-lives less than 20 and 30 nanoseconds, respectively—the half-life of Cl is unknown. Bromine is the only other halogen with more than one stable isotope. Trace
Bromine analogous to table salt. While it is rather rare in the Earth's crust, the high solubility of the bromide ion (Br) has caused its accumulation in the oceans. Commercially the element is easily extracted from brine pools, mostly in the United States, Israel and China. The mass of bromine in the oceans is about one three-hundredth that of chlorine. At high temperatures, organobromine compounds readily dissociate to yield free bromine atoms, a process that stops free radical chemical chain reactions. This effect makes organobromine compounds useful as fire retardants, and more than half the bromine produced worldwide each year is