Why tritium is unstable

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. About the Stability of hydrogen Isotopes Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 10 months ago. Active 3 years, 8 months ago. Viewed 3k times. Improve this question. Alpha decay involves emitting what is, in effect, the nucleus of a helium-4 atom, which is therefore a bigger thing than a tritium atom.

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Aug 23, See below. Explanation: Some isotopes are unstable and in order to become stable they emit either alpha or beta particles.

Related questions How do you determine isotope stability? How can you predict nuclear stability? Every element has its own number of isotopes. Carbon is stable, meaning it never undergoes radioactive decay. Carbon is unstable and undergoes radioactive decay with a half-life of about 5, years meaning that half of the material will be gone after 5, years.

Isotopes have unique properties, and these properties make them useful in diagnostics and treatment applications. They are important in nuclear medicine, oil and gas exploration, basic research, and national security.

Isotopes are needed for research, commerce, medical diagnostics and treatment, and national security. Tritium therefore has a particularly low radiotoxicity dose factor.

The World Health Organization, WHO considers that the limit of acceptability of water containing tritium is 10, Becquereles per liter.

This limit is protective. One should drink 2 liters of such water everuyday a day for a year to be exposed to a dose of 0. In February , during the unloading operation of nuclear fuel unloading, tritium contaminated water above normal levels spread under the Indian Wells nuclear power plant near New York. According to the Nuclear Regularity Commission - the US safety authority - this leak did not pose a threat to the environment.

Indeed, tritium the tritium radoactive toxicity particularly little small. Once spilled into the Hudson, the radioactive water was so diluted that tritium became virtually undetectable. The same goes for tritiated effluents from the La Hague plant in France. In biology, tritium is often used to mark hydrogen and thus in the study of metabolism.