OREANDA-NEWS. February 11, 2009. Ununseptium, or the 117th element, is the last of the undiscovered chemical elements in the seventh line of the periodic table. Its neighbors, Ununhexium and Ununoctium, have been synthesized in Dubna in very small quantities.

Director of the Dubna laboratory, Professor Sergey Dmitriyev says that this year they are planning to synthesize Ununseptium. “We will hardly have any problems with it: we know how to synthesize the 116th element, we know how to synthesize the 118th element. So, we can say for sure how the new element will behave.”

“We haven’t synthesized Ununsemptium before because this year we are having it synthesized by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They are supposed to give as 30 milligrams of berkelium. It costs millions of US dollars,” says Dmitriyev.

From ORNL the berkelium will be quickly delivered to Dimitrovgrad for the production of berkelium target.

“From Dimitrovgrad it will be brought to Dubna, put into U-400 cyclotron and for one year – as long as it is alive, we will study this reaction,” says Dmitriyev.