A new material is like a roach motel for radiation: Cesium checks in, but it can’t check out.
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The substance, described online January 24 in Nature Chemistry, could provide a better way to safely store radioactive isotopes of the element cesium, which is produced in nuclear power plants.
“This material points to a new mechanism with which we can go after these very hard-to-get ions,” says Mercouri Kanatzidis of Northwestern University, a coauthor of the new study.