Isotopes of zinc
Open-knowledge reference entry
Natural zinc (30Zn) is composed of the 5 stable isotopes 64Zn, 66Zn, 67Zn, 68Zn, and 70Zn; and 64Zn is the most abundant (48.6% natural abundance). Twenty-eight radioisotopes have been characterized; the most stable is 65Zn with a half-life of 243.94 days, and then 72Zn (half-life 46.5 hours). All other isotopes have half-lives of less than 14 hours and most of these have half-lives of less than 1 second. This element also has 10 meta states.
Zinc has been proposed as a "salting" material for nuclear weapons. A jacket of isotopically enriched 64Zn, irradiated by the intense high-energy neutron flux from an exploding thermonuclear weapon, would be transmuted to 65Zn, which emits 1.115 MeV of gamma radiation in about half of decays, and would significantly increase the radioactivity of the weapon's fallout for several years. Such a weapon is not known to have ever been built, tested, or used.
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