Zirconium and its alloys are highly reactive toward oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen.
The same is true for the vanadium, rubidium and zirconium concentrations in the sediment.
Figure 21 presents the magnetic field dependence of the gas and metal ion contents for cathodes made of yttrium and zirconium and oxygen as the fill gas.
The zirconium water reaction was implicated in the generation of the hydrogen, which subsequently exploded and blew the top off.
Space age materials such as uranium, beryllium, zirconium and titanium are of great value to the hospital service and for specialised machinery used elsewhere.
There are a lot of metallurgical problems; many odd metals like beryllium or zirconium have to be produced and examined to see if they have suitable properties.
Due to the lanthanide contraction of the elements in the sixth period, zirconium and hafnium have nearly identical ionic radii.
It is an unusual ceramic, having relatively high thermal and electrical conductivities, properties it shares with isostructural titanium diboride and zirconium diboride.
