ASIA / PACIFIC
January 18, 2016
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Japanese research institute earns right to name element 113
ELEMENTAL RIGHTS. Kosuke Morita of the
Riken Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science
points at the periodic table of the elements during a
press conference in Wako, Saitama prefecture, near
Tokyo. A team of Japanese scientists has met the
criteria for naming a new element, the synthetic
highly radioactive element 113, more than a dozen
years after they began working to create it. Morita
was notified of the decision by the U.S.-based
International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
(Kyodo News via AP)
By Elaine Kurtenbach
The Associated Press
OKYO — A team of Japanese
scientists has met the criteria for
naming a new element, the
synthetic highly radioactive element 113,
more than a dozen years after they began
working to create it.
Kosuke Morita, who led the research at
the government-affiliated Riken Nishina
Center for Accelerator-Based Science, was
notified of the decision by the U.S.-based
International Union of Pure and Applied
Chemistry (IUPAC).
“Now that we have conclusively
demonstrated the existence of element
113, we plan to look to the unchartered
territory of element 119 and beyond,”
Morita said in a statement.
A joint working group of the IUPAC and
International Union of Pure and Applied
Physics also announced decisions on
recognition of discoveries of elements 115,
117, and 118.
Discoveries of atomic elements have
often involved competition between scien-
tists. The news is a morale booster for
Riken, which has undergone a reorgani-
zation of some of its research following a
scandal over stem-cell research.
“To scientists, this is of greater value
T
than an Olympic gold medal,” Ryoji
Noyori, former Riken president and Nobel
laureate in chemistry, told reporters.
Riken had earlier said japonium might
be proposed as a name for element 113,
which provisionally had been named
ununtrium.
However, Morita has no specific
candidates under consideration. He said
he planned to spend part of this year
considering a name for the element.
The IUPAC group gave collaborating
teams from the Joint Institute for Nuclear
Research in Dubna, Russia; Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in
California; and the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee the
right to name elements 115 and 117.
Separately, scientists from the Dubna
laboratory and Lawrence Livermore were
invited to name element 118.
Element 113 sits between copernicium
THE 20TH
ANNUAL
JAPANESE
NEW YEAR
CELEBRATION
and flerovium on the periodic table. A joint
team of scientists in Russia and the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in the U.S. also were vying for naming
rights for 113 after announcing its
discovery in 2004.
Morita and his group used Riken’s linear
accelerator and ion separator to search for
new synthetic superheavy elements,
beginning in the late 1980s. In 2003, his
team began working to create element 113
by bombarding a thin layer of bismuth
with zinc ions travelling at about 10
percent the speed of light, Riken said.
Isotopes of element 113 have a very
short half-life, lasting for less than a
thousandth of a second, making its
discovery very difficult. After twice
succeeding to create it, the group tried for
seven years before achieving further
success, in August 2012.
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NETTING A NEW LOCATION. A man walks on a bridge by a construction site in Toyosu, in Tokyo,
where a new market will open in 2016. In November, the 80-year-old Tsukiji market, the world’s biggest and
most famous fish and seafood market, is due to move to the massive new complex further south in Tokyo Bay.
(AP Photo/Elaine Kurtenbach)
80-year-old Tokyo fish market
holds final New Year auction
Continued from page 2
management has gradually limited access
for safety’s sake.
Planning for the move began nearly 20
years ago, but the shift was delayed for
years due to toxins found in the soil at the
new location, the former site of a coal
gasification plant run by Tokyo Gas.
The city announced in 2001 that the
market would be moved by 2012. But
cleanup work dragged on, and in 2013,
Tokyo Gas disclosed it had found more
toxins at the site.
Critics of the move said city authorities
were swapping worries over cramped and
some say unhygienic conditions in Tsukiji
for a new set of health problems: unsafe
levels of lead, arsenic, hexavalent
chromium, and other toxins.
Cleanup of the tainted site required the
removal and replacement of six feet of
topsoil, construction of retaining walls,
pumping out of polluted ground water, and
an injection of fresh water.
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