Talk:Polonium dioxide/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Materialscientist (talk · contribs) 12:45, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

• Four essential sections are missing - they can be small, but I see no reasons why they should be excluded for this compound: occurrence, production (preparation currently says how it can be prepared, but there is no information on how, where, how much it is prepared), applications and safety/health issues. They will obviously overlap with the polonium article, but can be focused on the oxide, which I suppose is a common form of polonium. Materialscientist (talk) 12:45, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

• The article needs more information, which can be taken from sources like [1]. I might add more missing parts and possible sources as I'm trying to understand polonium. Russia has always been a major producer of Po, thus there must be Russian books on it. Solubility and many other basic properties of PoO2 are missing. There is also this obvious question: how PoO2 is handled and in what amounts? It is well known that Po spontaneously oxidizes/melts/vaporizes because of the heat it generates. Same should happen with the dioxide, and there might even be some "interconvesion equilibrium" between Po and PoO2. In this sense, "Polonium dioxide does not occur naturally due to the scarcity of polonium in nature and the high temperatures (250 °C) required to form the dioxide" is probably WP:OR. "Polonium dioxide has no uses outside of basic research" might need clarification - Po does have applications and will spontaneously oxidize unless sealed. I doubt it is possible to stop oxidation even by sealing, given a typical lifetime of Po devices of about a year, but oxidation might be not that crucial for the radiative applications. Materialscientist (talk) 06:12, 3 July 2012 (UTC)