Berkeley Lab to lead US hunt for element 120 after breakdown of collaboration with Russia

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is setting its sights on creating element 120 as part of a new US effort to discover the first elements in row eight of the periodic table. The move follows the breakdown of the US–Russian partnership, which had previously discovered the five heaviest elements, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The superheavy elements are too unstable to be found in nature and are made, one atom at a time, through nuclear fusion. This is achieved by accelerating ions of one element at a target made of a heavier element, hoping the two nuclei combine. For the past 25 years, this has mainly been done (except for nihonium, discovered in Japan) in accelerators at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, in collaboration with US teams at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.