Isotopes of tantalum

Natural tantalum (₇₃Ta) consists of two stable isotopes: ¹⁸¹Ta (99.988%) and ^180m
Ta
(0.012%).

There are also 35 known artificial radioisotopes, the longest-lived of which are ¹⁷⁹Ta with a half-life of 1.82 years, ¹⁸²Ta with a half-life of 114.43 days, ¹⁸³Ta with a half-life of 5.1 days, and ¹⁷⁷Ta with a half-life of 56.56 hours. All other isotopes have half-lives under a day, most under an hour. There are also numerous isomers, the most stable of which (other than ^180mTa) is ^178m1Ta with a half-life of 2.36 hours. All isotopes and nuclear isomers of tantalum are either radioactive or observationally stable, meaning that they are predicted to be radioactive but no actual decay has been observed.

Tantalum has been proposed as a "salting" material for nuclear weapons (cobalt is another, better-known salting material). A jacket of ¹⁸¹Ta, irradiated by the intense high-energy neutron flux from an exploding thermonuclear weapon, would transmute into the radioactive isotope ¹⁸²
Ta
with a half-life of 114.43 days and produce approximately 1.12 MeV of gamma radiation, significantly increasing the radioactivity of the weapon's fallout for several months. Such a weapon is not known to have ever been built, tested, or used.^[4] While the conversion factor from absorbed dose (measured in Grays) to effective dose (measured in Sievert) for gamma rays is 1 while it is 50 for alpha radiation (i.e., a gamma dose of 1 Gray is equivalent to 1 Sievert whereas an alpha dose of 1 Gray is equivalent to 50 Sievert), gamma rays are only attenuated by shielding, not stopped. As such, alpha particles require incorporation to have an effect while gamma rays can have an effect via mere proximity. In military terms, this allows a gamma ray weapon to deny an area to either side as long as the dose is high enough, whereas radioactive contamination by alpha emitters which do not release significant amounts of gamma rays can be counteracted by ensuring the material is not incorporated.