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gwillen comments on Stupid Questions January 2015 - Less Wrong
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Is anyone aware of the explanation behind why technetium is radioactive while molybdenum and ruthenium, the two elements astride it in the periodic table are perfectly normal? Searching on google on why certain elements are radioactive are giving results which are descriptive, as in X is radioactive, Y is radioactive, Z is what happens when radioactive decay occurs, etc. None seem to go into the theories which have been proposed to explain why something is radioactive.
Looking at http://www.frankswebspace.org.uk/ScienceAndMaths/physics/physicsGCE/nuclearImages/islandOfStability.jpg , one of the patterns I see is that even numbers of protons and neutrons are systematically more stable than odd numbers. So that might answer the specific part of your question about its neighbors. (As to why even numbers, I don't know but I bet it's related to spins.)
EDIT: Apparently this is enough of a thing that it even has its own Wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_and_odd_atomic_nuclei