Energy & Green Tech

Tracking the neural network's nuclear clues

Following the 2011 earthquake in Japan, a tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling in three Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant reactors. The reactors' cores largely melted in the first 72 hours.

Energy & Green Tech

France gives more people iodine pills in case of nuclear accident

France will soon start distributing radioactivity-blocking iodine pills to an additional 2.2 million people living near the country's 19 nuclear power plants, to be taken in case of accidental radiation leaks, regulators ...

Iodine

Iodine (pronounced /ˈaɪ.ədaɪn/, /ˈaɪ.ədɨn/, or in chemistry /ˈaɪ.ədiːn/; from Greek: ιώδης iodes "violet"), is a chemical element that has the symbol I and atomic number 53. Naturally-occurring iodine is a single isotope with 74 neutrons.

Chemically, iodine is the second least reactive of the halogens, and the second most electropositive halogen; trailing behind astatine in both of these categories. However, the element does not occur in the free state in nature. As with all other halogens (members of Group XVII in the periodic table), when freed from its compounds iodine forms diatomic molecules (I2).

Iodine and its compounds are primarily used in medicine, photography, and dyes. Although it is rare in the solar system and Earth's crust, the iodides are very soluble in water, and the element is concentrated in seawater. This mechanism helps to explain how the element came to be required in trace amounts by all animals and some plants, being the heaviest element commonly used by living organisms (only tungsten, used in enzymes by a few bacteria, is heavier).

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