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Zirconium - Periodic Table of Videos

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The team at periodicvideos has created a TED-Ed Lesson for every element of the periodic table. This one is about zirconium, a key part of a nuclear reactor. While very important, this element has the possibility to be incredibly dangerous, resulting in incidents such as those that occurred in Chernobyl and Fukushima.

As the professor showed us with the analytical data of his sample, zirconium contains significant quantities of hafnium. Why is it so difficult to separate Zr and Hf in the lab?

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