Isotopes of samarium

Naturally occurring samarium (₆₂Sm) is composed of five stable isotopes, ¹⁴⁴Sm, ¹⁴⁹Sm, ¹⁵⁰Sm, ¹⁵²Sm and ¹⁵⁴Sm, and two extremely long-lived radioisotopes, ¹⁴⁷Sm (half life: 1.066×10¹¹ y) and ¹⁴⁸Sm (6.3×10¹⁵ y), with ¹⁵²Sm being the most abundant (26.75% natural abundance). ¹⁴⁶Sm (9.20×10⁷ y) is also fairly long-lived, but is not long-lived enough to have survived in significant quantities from the formation of the Solar System on Earth, although it remains useful in radiometric dating in the Solar System as an extinct radionuclide. It is the longest-lived nuclide that has not yet been confirmed to be primordial. Its instability is due to having 84 neutrons (two more than 82, which is a magic number corresponding to a stable neutron configuration), and so it may emit an alpha particle (which has 2 neutrons) to form neodymium-142 with 82 neutrons.

Other than those, the longest-lived radioisotopes are ¹⁵¹Sm, which has a half-life of 94.6 years, and ¹⁴⁵Sm, which has a half-life of 340 days. All of the remaining radioisotopes, which range from ¹²⁹Sm to ¹⁶⁸Sm, have half-lives that are less than two days, and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than 48 seconds. The most stable of the known isomers is ^141mSm (half-life 22.6 minutes).

The long-lived isotopes, ¹⁴⁶Sm, ¹⁴⁷Sm, and ¹⁴⁸Sm, decay by alpha emission to isotopes of neodymium. Lighter unstable isotopes of samarium primarily decay by electron capture to isotopes of promethium, while heavier ones decay by beta decay to isotopes of europium. A 2012 paper revising the estimated half-life of ¹⁴⁶Sm from 10.3(5)×10⁷ y to 6.8(7)×10⁷ y was retracted (due to an experimental mistake) in 2023, and the current, more accurate, value published subsequently.

The isotope ¹⁴⁷Sm is used in samarium–neodymium dating and as mentioned the extinct ¹⁴⁶Sm can also be used for dating.

¹⁵¹Sm is a medium-lived fission product and acts as a neutron poison in the nuclear fuel cycle. The stable fission product ¹⁴⁹Sm is also a neutron poison.

Samarium is the lightest element with even atomic number with no theoretically stable isotopes (all isotopes of it can energetically decay by the alpha, beta, or double-beta modes), other such elements are those with atomic numbers > 66 (dysprosium, which has the heaviest theoretically stable nuclide, ¹⁶⁴Dy).

Samarium-149 (¹⁴⁹Sm) is an observationally stable isotope of samarium (predicted to decay, but no decays have ever been observed, giving it a half-life at least several orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe), and a product of the decay chain from the fission product ¹⁴⁹Nd (yield 1.0888%). ¹⁴⁹Sm is a neutron-absorbing nuclear poison with significant effect on nuclear reactor operation, second only to ¹³⁵Xe. Its neutron cross section is 40140 barns for thermal neutrons.

The equilibrium concentration (and thus the poisoning effect) builds to an equilibrium value in about 500 hours (about 20 days) of reactor operation, and since ¹⁴⁹Sm is stable, the concentration remains essentially constant during further reactor operation. This contrasts with xenon-135, which accumulates from the beta decay of iodine-135 (a short lived fission product) and has a high neutron cross section, but itself decays with a half-life of 9.2 hours (so does not remain in constant concentration long after the reactor shutdown), causing the so-called xenon pit.