State Research Centre – Nuclear Reactors Research Institute (OAO GNTs NIIAR, Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk Region, 100% Atomenergoprom-owned subsidiary) has launched the production of a unique target to make it possible to bring the 117th element of the Mendeleev Table into being. The target represents a disc 140 mm in diameter with 6 segments of 1.5 micron titanium foil fixed to it. Each segment has an electrochemically plated layer of berkelium preparation of 0.3-0.35 milligrams per square centimeter surface density.

Berkelium was delivered from the US where Oak Ridge National Laboratory specialists synthesized about 25 milligrams of berkelium-249. Such large quantities of the isotope have been produced for the first time ever.

The emergence of the 117th element itself is expected to take place in the city of Dubna at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research Flerov Laboratory. In 2000-2008 the Institute produced new superheavy elements with atomic numbers 113-116, and the heaviest of all currently synthesized elements is 118th.

The targets to synthesize elements 108, 115, 116 and 118 were also produced at NIIAR. Despite the different starting elements then used, the process technology of applying the preparations to the target surface developed by the Institute specialists is fairly well proven. However, according to Mikhail Ryabinin, Lead Researcher, Institute’s Radiochemical Division, ‘the difficulty presented by berkelium is that berkelium content on the disc surface can be controlled only by fixing californium-249, a berkelium fission product, which requires sophisticated and complex measuring to be conducted with high precision’. But they are positive at NIIAR they will cope with the task.