It's really good because I know feel that I know them a little bit better.

I mean, you never really know a chemical till you've tried doing reactions yourself.

So it's like meeting somebody very quickly to party rather than having dinner with.

Um but still, it is a start.

I know more about chemistry than I did at breakfast this morning.

Okay?

We're here in the central laboratory.

Andi, I'm gonna show you some Neptune yin samples.

This is Neptune Yamin solution.

It's been dissolved on dhe.

It's in nitric acid at the moment on what we've got here, three different oxidation states junior well down at the bottom of parallel table.

Things are very different.

There's all sorts of phenomena which are really very unusual just to do with the that the sheer size of these elements, how the electrons behave when I hear of nuclear fuel in nuclear power plants and things that I've heard of uranium on.

I've heard of plutonium, but you don't hear people talk about that.

Julian, what's Neptune you got to do with nuclear process?

So where does that even come from?

Okay, so that genius is one of the byproducts of radiating nuclear fuel.

It's one of the actor nights that's produced on dhe way.

Need to control it within the pure X process to make sure it goes to the right place goes toe the correct way street.

It has to be separated from the other elements.

When you're purifying the waste from nuclear reactors on dhe, it has a minor use in that you can use it to make the isotope of plutonium plutonium to 38 which is used in batteries.

But that's plutonium.

I'm not new to me.

Um, so of all the elements in the periodic table, I understand it has the largest liquid range by which I mean from going from a liquid phase two a gas face, you have to put in an extra 3363 degrees C.

Strictly speaking, it's Calvin, but degree sees essentially the same as Calvin.

When we dissolve the irradiated fuel, the junior goes into solution, and it can exist as Neptune formed at 25 on Neptune six.

Like many other metals, Net Union has a number of the soup called oxidation states in this case Neptune, um, Ford to name five Neptune six.

And what?

These are our atoms of Neptune yin, which differ with the number of electrons they've lost so they can switch.

The Neptune five can lose an electron and go to Neptune in six.

Or it can gain an electron to go to Neptune in four.

In fact, net Union five in solution is not very stable.

And if you get the nitric acid concentration not correct, half of it goes to Neptune.

Six and half of it goes to Neptune for much of the skill in this area of chemistry is manipulating the strength of the nitric acid to get the right oxidation he wants at the right time.

And they have bottles over here of different strengths of nitric acid, which they can drip into the solution at the right time.

So when we're doing research on advance re processing, we'd like to send the next union all in one direction, which means control in these oxidation states.

We're working on a floating actually to convert all of the net junior Junior six and keep it.

There's ah chemical re agent within nitric acid, that is produced through radiation chemistry called nitro sausage, and having that in the correct amount also helps stabilize the net.

To name five Internet Union six.

It's not even a dramatic chemical reaction that's just tweaking a concentration.

There are a lot of competing chemical reactions going on.

They're all change at different rates with temperature.

So it's finding the balance where you can dr the equilibrium towards Towards Neptune.

Six.

So Neptune IAM comes straight after uranium in the periodic table, and it's just before plutonium on.

It's not a coincidence that it's called Neptune Ian, because if uranium, of course, is named after Uranus, Plutonium is named after Pluto's.

And if you think about the order of the planet's, although Pluto's now isn't a planet, I understand Neptune is right there in the middle of people.

Don't use the name Neptune you very often, because they don't talk about the chemistry of that element very often, either.

Actually, there's another thing about Neptune you, which is that it almost could not have bean Neptune you because Jermaine Iam was nearly called Neptune.

Yeah, of course, you can only have an element name once, so if Germain IAM had been Neptune iem than the union would be something else.

All right.

You ready?

I'm gonna ask you a question.

You weren't expecting.

What do you know about the planet Neptune?

I know it's a long way from Earth.

You know what it looks like?

I love my parents.

Yeah, I always think it's the one with the green tinge to it, but I'm not sure if that's right, because they do.

They become a bit bluer or yes, I was.

Think of Pluto's big blue eyes like Rocky.

But Uranus is kind of green.

Green.

You'll even that's not agree.

Nectarines of Louis One.

Okay.