What are more uses for Hafnium than just nuclear rods?
826623
Tungsten filaments (as a tungsten alloy) in bulbs and electrodes...
1115151
Suppose you are collecting Uranium 238, because you want to build a better bomb.  If you were stupid enough to pile it in one place, eventually you would have enough to start a self-sustaining reaction and it would melt down.\n\nThe amount required to maintain a self-sustaining reaction is called "critical mass".\n\nFission is when you split heavy atoms, uranium or plutonium, to make lighter atoms.\n\nFusion is when you combine very light atoms, deuterium I believe, to make something heaver, like helium.  It takes a lot of evergy to get a fusion reaction going.
642246
In certain Nuclear reactions involving smaller nuclei from hydrogen to Iron, alpha particles will be released. These alpha particles are basically Helium nuclei. When these Helium nuclei are passed through an electron beam, they get converted to pure Helium gas.
574094
India has built a test reactor called FBTR or Fast Breeder Test Reactor designed for 40MW at the Babha Atomic Research Centre and is building a 500MW Prototype reactor at Kalpakkam near Chennai. India has large reserves of Thorium but is more likely to look at the Uranium fuel cycle for cost reasons.
331010
Tin fibers are very strong and can be used like carbon fibers in epoxy to make very strong composites.  Tin whiskers can be used in electrical work (radio) as diodes.  These are pretty unusual.
433955
radioactivity is the spontaneous emission of alpha beta or gamma rays from a radioactive substance to attain stability.\nthey can be used as tracers to know the path of ne reaction\nsome of them can be used to treat cancer like co-60. and uranium is already used in nuclear reactors for generating electricity.
78416
This is really hard to answer. It's not like there is some New York Element Exchange where traders buy and sell elements. If you mean what is the monetary value of an element, there are some that are pretty easy to determine,  since metals like gold, silver, platinum, palladium, aluminum, copper, and other metals are used in industry. But if you want to know the cost of hafnium, then you aren't going to find any one answer, if you can find one at all. \n\nIf you want to see what the metals market prices are go here:http://www.metalprices.com/\nThat will give you most of them. If you want to see the cost of gases for industrial use, like nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, helium, you'll have to contact someone like Praxair or Airgas to get a quote.\nhttp://www.praxair.com/praxair.nsf/0/6021E2747E378CF285256B9F0070368D?OpenDocument
610070
Thallium doesn't have any fissile isotopes so it'd be useless as a form of energy.  If it is Thorium that you were refering to (as santosh_k suggested, pity most of the rest of his answer is nonsense) then a Thorium Breeder is actually a nuclear reactor so the question to ask would be why we use Uranium instead of Thorium as the fuel for our nuclear reactors.\n\nThe first reason is that Uranium from the ground is useful after some processing while with Thorium we have to run it through a reactor to breed Uranium 233 (which you won't find much of in the ground but is quite good at running a reactor).  If you can get more Thorium 232 to convert to Uranium 233 then you can create more fuel than you consume which is what a Thorium reactor does (at first you'd use Uranium 235 from the ground as the fuel).  The Canadian reactor design is well suited to use as a Thorium breeder and the Indians are looking very closely at the technology because they have little Uranium but a lot of Thorium, the US also operate a Light Water Thorium breeder.\n\nMost Breeder research has been in Liquid Metal cooled fast breeders which produce Plutonium 239 from Uranium 238 (while the Thorium breeders produce Uranium 233 from Thorium 232).
1033515
You can burn it. \n\nYou can use it in a fuel cell (essentially a more complicated way of burning it that gives you electricity directly).\n\nYou cannot use it for nuclear power if it ordinary hydrogen, but if it is deuterium (hydrogen with a neutron as well as a proton in its nucleus) you can in theory fuse it to form helium - though this has not been achieved in a practical way yet (the Sun does it pretty well though).
780706
none, the 2 different bombs you are trying to get at are usually called atomic and hydrogen bombs\n\natomic (that was dropped over Japan 1946) is uncontrolled splitting (fission) of uranium whereas in the nuclear power reactors this is done slowly -- the reaction is controlled.\n\nhydrogen bomb was never tested over human population (only atoll Bikini) is a synthesis (fusion) of hydrogen into helium. This reaction produces the energy from the Sun and it is still in a research mode here on earth to get this reaction under control.\nIt would be much more effective source of energy than the nuclear one.
75318
It's one of the densest metals, yet non-radioactive and inexpensive  - compared with its other cousins eg. Gold. Because it is so dense and heavy, can protect us from X rays and radioactive substances. It is also malleable and was used in lead pipes which gave everyone lead poisoning.
769589
Uses of praseodymium:\n\nAs an alloying agent with magnesium to create high-strength metals that are used in aircraft engines. \nPraseodymium forms the core of carbon arc lights which are used in the motion picture industry for studio lighting and projector lights. \nPraseodymium compounds are used to give glasses and enamels a yellow color. \nPraseodymium is a component of didymium glass, which is used to make certain types of welder's and glass blower's goggles. \nDr. Matthew Sellars of the Laser Physics Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia slowed down a light pulse to a few hundred meters per second using praseodymium mixed with silicate crystal. \n\nApplications\nUses of neodymium include\n\nNeodymium is a component of didymium used for colouring glass to make welder's goggles. \nNeodymium colours glass in delicate shades ranging from pure violet through wine-red and warm grey. Light transmitted through such glass shows unusually sharp absorption bands; the glass is used in astronomical work to produce sharp bands by which spectral lines may be calibrated. Neodymium is also used to remove the green colour caused by iron contaminants from glass. \nNeodymium salts are used as a colourant for enamels. \nNeodymium is used in the strongest permanent magnets known - Nd2Fe14B. These magnets are cheaper, lighter, and stronger than samarium-cobalt magnets. Neodymium magnets appear in high-quality products such as microphones, professional loudspeakers, in-ear headphones and computer hard disks where low mass, small volume, or strong magnetic fields are required. \nProbably because of similarities to Ca2+, Nd3+ has been reported [1] to promote plant growth. Rare earth element compounds are frequently used in China as fertilizer. \nSize and strength of volcanic eruption can be predicted by scanning for neodymium isotopes. Small and large volcanic eruptions produce lava with different neodymium isotope composition. From the composition of isotopes, scientists predict how big the coming eruption will be, and use this information to warn residents of the intensity of the eruption. \nCertain transparent materials with a small concentration of neodymium ions can be used in lasers as gain media for infrared wavelengths (1054-1064 nm), e.g. Nd:YAG (yttrium aluminium garnet), Nd:YLF (yttrium lithium fluoride), Nd:YVO4 (yttrium orthvanadate), and Nd:glass. The current laser at the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the HELEN 1-TW neodymium-glass laser, can access the midpoints of pressure and temperature regions and is used to acquire data for modelling on how density, temperature and pressure interact inside warheads. HELEN can create plasmas of around 106 K, from which opacity and transmission of radiation are measured. \nNeodymium glass (Nd:Glass) solid-state lasers are used in extremely high power (terawatt scale), high energy (megajoules) multiple beam systems for inertial confinement fusion. Nd:Glass lasers are usually frequency tripled to the third harmonic at 351 nm in laser fusion
758598
Gamma rays, heat and, in the case of a few highly-radioactive elements, light; they glow in the dark.  Beta particles which are high-energy electrons.   Their kinetic energy can be converted into light by a phosphor such as zinc sulphide, or if they enter a transparent medium with a high refractive index, they emit blue Cerenkov radiation.  Radioactive materials are warmer than their surroundings because alpha particles, beta rays and neutrons are all fast-moving particles and when they are absorbed their kinetic energy is converted into heat.  In a nuclear reactor the heat is used to raise steam which drives a turbine.  In the thermionic generators used on deep space probes it is converted directly into about 200 watts or so of electricity.
964537
Tritium.\n\nThat is the isotope of hydrogen with one proton and two neutron in the nucleus.  It is used as a low grade radio-active activator in phosphorescent paint, replacing radium which is much more dangerous.\n\n(Science Teacher below is wrong: deuterium is a stable nucleon, it is thus not radio active)
748939
I assume you are talking about extracting the Plutonium and Uranium 235 from the spent fuel currently stored in casks and storage pools.  Yes, it is feasible to cull these isotopes from the waste fuel, and use it to make new fuel to place back in reactors to make electrical power.\n\nThe spent fuel currently stored in casks generate very little heat outside the cask and not enough in the casks to be a practical source for electrical generation.
640066
Well ion sources are used many places. In nuclear chemistry ion sources ar used for the bombardment of nucleides with ions so that they may undergo some nuclear transformation. Well this is one of the simplest uses of ion sources i could think of. There may be many more uses but i guss this is the best one!!
293224
To be annoyingly pedantic, there are no fusion reactors yet.  They still have not achieved breakeven point of input energy=output energy.  The lasers you refer to are one area of research to achieve this.  \n\nTo answer your question, it is an evolving field, not just laser technology; but now the design of the fuel pellet is now a subject of interest.\n\n"Nova Laser System\n\nNova is the name given to the second generation laser fusion device at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. It employs lasers ten times more powerful than the Shiva laser fusion device and will attempt to reach the breakeven point for fusion. Nova makes use of ten lasers which are focused on a 1 mm diameter target area, dumping 100,000 joules of energy into the target in a nanosecond.\n\nAs of 1994, Nova has reached the Lawson criterion, but at a temperature too low for fusion ignition."\n\nHowever, by designing the laser to make multiple passes through the laser material using lenses; and by designing the fuel pellet to these criteria, the LNL's 192 nova lasers  have competition.  a Few (<10 I believe) of these new lasers and redesigned fuel pellets achieved close to the aame results as the 192 nova lasers.