Caesium-137 or approximately 44 μg/kg) of caesium-137 (and 950 to 1400 rads), they die within 33 days, while animals with half of that burden all survived for a year. 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. Caesium-134 and caesium-137 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. As of 2005 and for the next few hundred years, caesium-137 is the principal source of radiation in the zone of
Isotope separation first isotope separator was developed at the Copenhagen Cyclotron by Bohr and coworkers using the principle of electromagnetic separation. Today, there are many laboratories around the world that supply beams of radioactive ions for use. Arguably the principal Isotope Separator On Line (ISOL) is ISOLDE at CERN, which is a joint European facility spread across the Franco-Swiss border near the city of Geneva. This laboratory uses mainly proton spallation of uranium carbide targets to produce a wide range of radioactive fission fragments that are not found naturally on earth. During spallation (bombardment with high energy protons), a uranium carbide target