My (extremely limited) understanding of what causes an element to be either stable or reactive is due to a mismatch in energy in the nucleus due to either extra protons or extra neutrons. So why wouldn’t something like Plutonium-188 be stable, since it would have 94 protons and 94 neutrons?
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the nucleus is made of protons (with a positive charge) and neutrons (with no charge). because protons are all positive, they repel each other (remember that like charges repel), and they’re looking for any excuse to fly apart. that’s where the neutrons come in; they act as a sort of buffer between protons and hold the nucleus together. the force that is used to keep them together is called the strong nuclear force. as you add more protons, you get more interactions between them and a bigger chance of them flying apart, so you need more neutrons to fill in the space between them. for example, the most stable isotope of uranium is uranium-238, with 92 protons and 146 neutrons. at some point, there’s just no way to keep all the protons happy and they fly apart soon after being brought together.
you can kind of imagine the nucleus like a group of people that all really don’t like each other. in order to keep the group together, you need some mediators in between so that people don’t leave. with two or three uncooperative people, only a few mediators are needed, but as you add more and more people, more and more mediators are needed. sometimes, despite the mediators, people will still leave the group, and this is more likely the more people you have, and that’s how you get radioactive decay.
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