Word: osmium
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...want to make a statement with a really, really expensive metal, you could go with osmium. My personal favorite is gadolinium. When you say it fast, it sings. On the more fanciful side, californium, for the laid-back customer, einsteinium, for the exceptionally wise money manager, neptunium, for stratospheric credit limits, and, for those just starting out, lead. --Tim Foecke, metallurgist, National Institute of Standards and Technology
TIME traced one secret multimillion-dollar sale of osmium 187, a by-product of nuclear reactors that is not weapons related but is an extremely expensive metal with applications in nuclear-energy production. The middlemen in the deal included a former party official and a member of the KGB, who acquired the element worth $40,000 a gram from the factory and sold it to a Swedish company for $70,000 -- though it is not clear whether the profits went into private pockets or the depleted coffers...
There are staggering profits to be made selling Russia's precious metals, especially those mined or produced by MINATOM. These include internationally restricted materials like boron 10, which is used in reactor control rods, and osmium 187, a nonradioactive isotope that can sell for more than $100,000 a gram. International trade in other, less exotic materials, such as zirconium, beryllium and hafnium, is controlled by nuclear nonproliferation agreements...
...Berkeley team got around that problem by "grabbing" the whirling buckyballs with atomic "handles" containing the element osmium. The handles enabled the scientists to manipulate billions of buckyballs and align them in an orderly, crystalline fashion. By bombarding the carbon samples with a thin beam of X rays, the Berkeley scientists got an accurate computer representation of the soccer ball-like arrangement of the atoms...