Why does technetium not naturally occur on earth?

Answer 1

A small amount of technetium is now in our earths environment, this is due to: - Nuclear bombs - Nuclear testing - Nuclear Accidents eg the Chernobyl disaster this is where technetium come from in small amounts in our environment. - There is additionally technetium present quite abundantly (up to about 5%) in nuclear reactor waste, and a small amount of this has escaped to the environment. - And finally, technetium is naturally present in our environment, but only in really tiny quantities in uranium ore. One tonne of a high grade uranium ore might typically contain 0.1 to 0.2 micrograms of technetium, which can be detected by its radiation signal. A very small proportion of natural uranium atoms undergo spontaneous fission (break in half) in the natural environment, and technetium is a likely product.

Answer 2

Because it has no stable isotopes, that means that it's radioactive so it decays with time.The problem is that it decays so fast to remain one earth, most of the isotopes have a half-life ( time required for a quantity to fall to half its value as measured at the beginning of the time period) of less than an hour so if it ever existed on earth, now it's gone.

Answer 3

Technetium is not naturally abundant on Earth because all of its isotopes are radioactive with short half-lives. This means that any technetium that was present when Earth formed has decayed long ago. Additionally, any new technetium produced naturally on Earth is quickly incorporated into stable minerals or removed through radioactive decay.