Abstract
At present there are over 3,000 known nuclides (see the Appendix in Vol. 2 on the “Table of the Nuclides”), 265 of which are stable, while the rest, i.e., more than 90% of them, are radioactive. The chemical applications of the specific isotopes of chemical elements are mostly connected with the latter group, including quite a number of metastable nuclear isomers, making the kinetics of radioactive decay an important chapter of nuclear chemistry. After giving a phenomenological and then a statistical interpretation of the exponential law, the various combinations of individual decay processes as well as the cases of equilibrium and nonequilibrium will be discussed. Half-life systematics of the different decay modes detailed in Chaps. 2 and 4 of this volume are also summarized.
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Nagy, S. (2011). Kinetics of Radioactive Decay. In: Vértes, A., Nagy, S., Klencsár, Z., Lovas, R.G., Rösch, F. (eds) Handbook of Nuclear Chemistry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0720-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0720-2_7
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