Tritium deuterium, another isotope of hydrogen, by Ernest Rutherford, Mark Oliphant, and Paul Harteck. However, their experiment could not isolate tritium, which was later accomplished by Luis Alvarez and Robert Cornog, who also realized tritium's radioactivity. Willard F. Libby recognized that tritium could be used for radiometric dating of water and wine. Tritium Tritium ( or ; symbol ' or ', also known as hydrogen-3) is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The nucleus of tritium (sometimes called a triton) contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of protium (by far the most abundant hydrogen isotope) contains one proton and
Tritium for watches and instruments, and, along with deuterium, as a fuel for nuclear fusion reactions with applications in energy generation and weapons. The name of this isotope is derived . While tritium has several different experimentally determined values of its half-life, the National Institute of Standards and Technology lists (). It decays into helium-3 by beta decay as in this nuclear equation: and it releases 18.6 keV of energy in the process. The electron's kinetic energy varies, with an average of 5.7 keV, while the remaining energy is carried off by the nearly undetectable electron antineutrino. Beta particles from tritium