Berkelium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with the symbol Bk and atomic number 97. It is a member of the actinide and transuranium element series. It is named after the city of Berkeley, California, the location of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (then the University of California Radiation Laboratory) where it was discovered in December 1949. Berkelium was the fifth transuranium element discovered.
Berkelium is a soft, silvery-white, radioactive actinide metal. In the periodic table, it is located to the right of the actinide curium, to the left of the actinide californium and below the lanthanide terbium with which it shares many similarities in physical and chemical properties. Its density of 14.78 g/cm3 lies between those of curium (13.52 g/cm3) and californium (15.1 g/cm3), as does its melting point of 986 °C, below that of curium (1340 °C) but higher than that of californium (900 °C).
All berkelium isotopes have a half-life far too short to be primordial. Therefore, any primordial berkelium, that is, berkelium present on the Earth during its formation, has decayed by now.
On Earth, berkelium is mostly concentrated in certain areas, which were used for the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and 1980, as well as at the sites of nuclear incidents, such as the Chernobyl disaster, Three Mile Island accident and 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash. Analysis of the debris at the testing site of the first U.S. hydrogen bomb, Ivy Mike, (1 November 1952, Enewetak Atoll), revealed high concentrations of various actinides, including berkelium. For reasons of military secrecy, this result was published only in 1956. Nuclear reactors produce mostly, among the berkelium isotopes, berkelium-249. During the storage and before the fuel disposal, most of it beta decays to californium-249. The latter has a half-life of 351 years, which is relatively long when compared to the other isotopes produced in the reactor, and is therefore undesirable in the disposal products.The transuranic elements from americium to fermium, including berkelium, occurred naturally in the natural nuclear fission reactor at Oklo, but no longer do so.
Although very small amounts of berkelium were possibly produced in previous nuclear experiments, it was first intentionally synthesized, isolated and identified in December 1949 by Glenn T. Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, Stanley G. Thompson, and Kenneth Street, Jr.. They used the 60-inch cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. Similar to the nearly simultaneous discovery of americium (element 95) and curium (element 96) in 1944.
Little is known about the effects of berkelium on human body, and analogies with other elements may not be drawn because of different radiation products.
