Fission of nuclei far from stability

The secondary-beam facility of GSI provided the technical equipment for a new kind of fission experiment. Fission properties of short-lived neutron-deficient nuclei have been investigated in inverse kinematics. The measured element distributions reveal new kinds of systematics on shell structure and even-odd effects and lead to an improved understanding of structure effects in nuclear fission. The relevance of these studies for some presently considered applications is described. Prospects for future experiments are discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.