10 minutes ago, Bill W said:

Neptunium was named after the planet Neptune, which was named after the Roman god,  Neptune was god of water and the oceans and is most commonly pictured carrying a trident.  

I suppose it's better than Poseidonium.

Radioactivity was discovered in 1896. Until then radioactive material was thought to derive its properties from external sources like exposure to sunlight.

3 minutes ago, Bill W said:

If we named the planets after the Greek gods and Poseidon was also a planet.  

To the winners go the spoils.

16 hours ago, JamesSavik said:

The vast majority of Neptunium is created in standard Uranium pile fission reactors. Uranium captures enough neutrons to become a unique element.

There has been some experimentation on using it in nuclear warheads, but the short half-life of its most useful isotopes makes that impractical. There has been some discussion of using NP in enhanced radiation warheads (EMP), but it has the same practical difficulty. The shelf life on any Neptunium-based warhead would only be, at most, a dozen years before the fissile components would have to be reprocessed.

 

This wouldn't be a problem if nuclear weapons were used more often.   lol