Studies of the actinide elements and compounds were (and are) motivated by the need to characterize their structural and thermodynamic properties for the development of nuclear fuels and the treatment of waste, whether it be for long-term storage or ideas involving transmutation in high-powered accelerators. For the most part, tables giving these data exist, although the data for transuranium compounds are rather sparse. A much more difficult task is to understand the data and develop theories that have predictive power in this part of the periodic table. In doing this, however, we are confronted with the extremely complicated electronic structure of the 5f shell and the great paucity of high-quality data on materials containing transuranium isotopes.
对锕系元素和化合物的研究(过去和现在)是为了表征它们的结构和热力学性质,以便开发核燃料和处理废物,无论是用于长期存储还是涉及在高能加速器中进行转变的想法。在很大程度上,存在着提供这些数据的表格,尽管超铀化合物的数据相当稀缺。一个更加困难的任务是理解这些数据,并发展在周期表这一部分具有预测能力的理论。然而,在这个过程中,我们面临着5f壳层的极其复杂的电子结构以及含有超铀同位素材料的高质量数据的严重匮乏。