Use

Curium was discovered by Seaborg, James, and Ghiorso in 1944 during chemical fractionation of plutonium irradiated with alpha particles (32 MeV). There are no major commercial uses for curium because of the extremely small amountproduced. In the future, the most important use of curium may be to provide the power forsmall, compact thermoelectric sources of electricity, by generating heat through the nucleardecay of radioisotope curium-241. These small, efficient power sources can be used in individualhomes or remote regions to provide electricity to areas that cannot secure it from othersources. It could also be used as a source of electricity in spacecraft. However, today curium’smain use is for basic scientific laboratory research.