Curium

This chapter provides an overview of curium chemistry, with emphasis on advances since the publication of the 1986 version of this chapter (Eller and Penneman, 1986). The technical literature indicates that chemical investigations during this period have focused on the following general areas:

• Separations chemistry related to high-level waste management: This topic is addressed in Section 9.5.

• High-temperature superconductivity studies of curium compounds: Soderholm (1992) has provided an excellent review in this area. Additional discussion can be found in Section 9.7 and in Chapter 20.

• Behavior of curium in the environment: This topic is addressed in Chapter 27.

• Use of curium isotopes as targets to prepare superheavy elements: Hoffman (1985) and Lobanov et al. (1997) provide examples. This subject is discussed in Chapter 14.

• Use of curium isotopes in analytical space applications: Radchenko et al. (1999, 2000), Abramychev et al. (1992), and Vesnovskii et al. (1996) provide illustrative examples of this type of work applied to alpha spectrometry analysis of extraterrestrial rocks and soils.

• Transmutation in reactors and accelerators: Artisyuk et al. (1999), Gerasimov et al. (2000), and Raison and Haire (2001) describe this topic.