Feed

Transuranium element, any of the chemical elements that lie beyond uranium in the periodic table—i.e., those with atomic numbers greater than 92. Twenty-six of these elements have been discovered and named or are awaiting confirmation of their discovery. Eleven of them, from neptunium through lawrencium, belong to the actinoid series. The others, which have atomic numbers higher than 103, are referred to as the transactinoids. All the transuranium elements are unstable, decaying radioactively, with half-lives that range from tens of millions of years to mere fractions of a second. Since only two of the transuranium elements have been found in nature (neptunium and plutonium) and those only in trace amounts, the synthesis of these elements through nuclear reactions has been an important source of knowledge about them.