Isotopes of krypton


There are 33 known isotopes of krypton with atomic mass numbers from 69 through 101. Naturally occurring krypton is made of five stable isotopes and one which is slightly radioactive with an extremely long half-life, plus traces of radioisotopes that are produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere.

List of isotopes

Krypton-81

Radioactive krypton-81 is the product of reactions with cosmic rays that strike the atmosphere, along with the six stable or nearly stable krypton isotopes. Krypton-81 has a half-life of about 229,000 years.
Krypton-81 has been used for dating old groundwater.

Krypton-81m

Krypton-85

is a radioisotope of krypton that has a half-life of about 10.75 years. This isotope is produced by the nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear weapons testing and in nuclear reactors, as well as by cosmic rays. An important goal of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 was to eliminate the release of such radioisotopes into the atmosphere, and since 1963 much of that krypton-85 has had time to decay. However, it is inevitable that krypton-85 is released during the reprocessing of fuel rods from nuclear reactors.

Atmospheric concentration

The atmospheric concentration of krypton-85 around the North Pole is about 30 percent higher than that at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station because nearly all of the world's nuclear reactors and all of its major nuclear reprocessing plants are located in the northern hemisphere, and also well-north of the equator.
To be more specific, those nuclear reprocessing plants with significant capacities are located in the United States, the United Kingdom, the French Republic, the Russian Federation, Mainland China, Japan, India, and Pakistan.

Krypton-86

Krypton-86 was formerly used to define the meter from 1960 until 1983, when the definition of the meter was based on the wavelength of the 606 nm spectral line of a krypton-86 atom.

Others

All other radioisotopes of krypton have half-lives of less than one day, except for krypton-79, a positron emitter with a half-life of about 35.0 hours.