Topic summary
Primordial element
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Primordial nuclide.
Primordial elements
A primordial element is a chemical element with at least one primordial nuclide. There are 251 stable primordial nuclides and 35 radioactive primordial nuclides, but only 80 primordial stable elements—hydrogen through lead, atomic numbers 1 to 82, except for technetium (43) and promethium (61)—and three radioactive primordial elements—bismuth (83), thorium (90), and uranium (92). If plutonium (94) turns out to be primordial (specifically, the long-lived isotope Pu), then it would be a fourth radioactive primordial, though practically speaking it would still be more convenient to produce synthetically. Bismuth's half-life is so long that it is often classed with the 80 stable elements instead, since its radioactivity is not a cause for concern. The number of elements is smaller than the number of nuclides, because many of the primordial elements are represented by multiple isotopes. See chemical element for more information.