FRIB, what do you know about it?

I have for many years wanted to see the construction of a facility for producing heavy isotopes with a higher than normal number of neutrons. FRIB seems to exceed my wildest dreams in that department, and will produce beams of isotopes with so many neutrons that they can only be produced astrophysically by the little-understood r-process.

But how does it FRIB work? I can see several articles on why they are building it, which is so beep obvious that it doesn’t need stating. But nothing on, for example, neutron flux generation and densities.

Perhaps I’m misreading the figure, but I interpret this graph as saying that FRIB has the potential to more than triple the number of known neutron-rich isotopes for elements heavier than Lanthanum, and so give us for the first time a real measurement of the nuclear processes involved in the generation of elements heavier than iron in supernovae.

Darn, just reading http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.1759.pdf about prospects for synthesising superheavy elements close to the postulated islands of stability. These are all very neutron-rich, which has made them inaccessible so far.

There are three possible methods discussed: (a) the use of neutron-rich radioactive beams. (b) the
use of damped collisions and © the use of multi-nucleon transfer reactions.

The method (b) has been used to generate the heaviest elements so far, up to Z = 118, but with insufficient neutrons.
FRIB has the potential to do both (a) and ©.

The article concludes that neither a, b nor c has the potential to create superheavy elements close to the postulated second island of stability (Z = 120, 124, 126 and N = 184). The upper limit on elements from method (a) is Bohrium (Z = 107) and for method © is Californium (Z = 98).

The method I’ve wanted to see implemented – immerse neutron-rich isotopes in an intense bath of neutrons – is not mentioned.

Are these superheavy elements that are postulated to be stabile, something we can find a use for or are they radioactive and dangerous

Cymek said:

Are these superheavy elements that are postulated to be stabile, something we can find a use for or are they radioactive and dangerous

It’s still not clear whether they are stable or near stable. They can’t be far from stable. Md-260

As for how useful they are, if it’s only possible to generate say three atoms per month then it would take a very long time to get enough for engineering applications, or enough to be dangerous.