A sample of DNA can be broken down this way into sections. Caesium chloride has proved ideal as the dissolved compound for splitting off nucleic acids, because of its good water solubility and relatively high density. Here, extremely high speed centrifuges, producing a g-force of up to a million times that of Earth surface gravity, are used to separate out materials using a gradient of increasingly high concentrations of a dissolved compound. One of the most common uses of the compound is in ultracentrifugation. In fact, the non-radioactive form has some interesting tricks up its sleeve. But it has a beneficial medical use, and many of its applications involve the harmless stable form. When a compound like caesium chloride gets a bad name, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a problem. Source: Thongsuk Atiwannakul / Ĭaesium chloride can boost the efficiency of solar cells She was one of four who died as a result of the exposure, with over 200 more suffering significant radioactive contamination. Even the scrapyard owner’s six-year-old niece used it as a skin decoration. Samples of the glowing powder were shared around. Because the exposed caesium chloride gave off an eerie blue glow, it became a popular talking point. The thieves partially broke open the container and sold it on for scrap. Generally, the radioactive form is kept in highly secure containers, but in 1987 a caesium chloride source containing about 93 g of the salt was stolen from a disused hospital in Goiania, Brazil. Caesium chloride packs a lot of radioactivity into a small volume, making it ideal for treatments where the radioactive material needs to be accurately sited. This radioactive form is used to treat cancers and, unlike most other medical radioisotopes, it is water soluble. But to create the radioactive form of the compound, it is enriched with caesium isotopes, particularly caesium-137, produced in nuclear reactor waste. Elemental caesium itself is usually produced from the caesium chloride extracted from the mineral. It is most concentrated in a mineral called pollucite, also containing aluminium and silicon among other constituents, where caesium makes up around 20% of the whole. Caesium chloride with non-radioactive caesium-133 occurs naturally, as a trace constituent in some minerals and in mineral water (which is where caesium was discovered). The best-known uses are probably those involving a radioactive form of the salt.
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