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So, like to bring up a citation how "mere gloves" shield you from "fast neutrons"?

As I said, fast neutrons aren't a problem. They're only a result of spontaneous or induced fission. Since I'm going to assume you're not holding your chunk of fissile Uranium near a neutron source to do that (bad I assumption for you, possibly) I'm going to point out that spontaneous fission from 1kg of Uranium is ~6.18 neutrons/second / 2 (unless you're curled in a fetal position around your chunk of Uranium... also a possibility with you), or less than your exposure at ground level to simple cosmic ray bombardment fast neutrons.

Uranium is a "heavy metal" hence its chemical danger on the body. Which does not come from "it wants to react with everything" ...

Not all heavy metals are toxic. Though Uranium is toxic both because it is a heavy metal, and... because it wants to react with everything.

I have some suggested reading for you:
http://webmineral.com/help/Rad...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

I sincerely hope you don't represent the state of German education.

I don't see what this has to do with CoSO4 . 7H2O (bieberite) http://webmineral.com/data/Bieberite.shtml

Did you look it up? It is apparently the chemical formula for a mineral called... wait for it... cummingtonite.

dual purpose, can be also used as flame shield...

"One form of cummingtonite (a variety called "amosite") is asbestos-form and can be used as asbestos. Asbestos has many industrial uses despite some health risks and is made from different minerals, all with a fibrous habit. Serpentine and tremolite asbestos are considered the better varieties due to their greater flexibility and tensile strength, but cummingtonite asbestos has its uses and is being mined for this reason in South Africa."

http://www.galleries.com/minerals/silicate/cummingt/cummingt.htm

http://www.mindat.org/min-1170.html

http://webmineral.com/data/Cummingtonite.shtml

K2Fe++Cl42(H2O)?

Last I checked, RADIOACTIVE is not the same thing as non-toxic and uraninite is pretty danged radioactive. Personally when I think non-toxic I think elmer's glue, not something that in even very small pieces can kill me and my whole family. Urininte Mineral Data: http://webmineral.com/data/Uraninite.shtml

There's a big one in, I think, Butte, just sitting there because the price of copper is too low. It's the source for a copper gemstone called covellite. There's also copper in UP Michigan, around Houghton and Copper Harbor.

Supply and demand. Currently, the supply far exceeds the demand. When the demand grows, those mines will re-open, supplying the demand for copper as well as the small demand for gem covellite and native copper.

Don't sweat it, this is yet another phony panic.

Taking radioactive material out of the ground and returning less radioactive material to safer places in the ground, is something I can't consider pollution.

The radioactivity of natural uranium is about 179,000,000 Becquerels per kilogram (179 MBq/kg) (See Radioactivity in Minerals). Low, intermediate and high level nuclear waste is radioactive on the order of 1 MBq/kg, 10 GBq/kg and 100 TBq/kg respectively (See What is nuclear waste?). Therefore intermediate and high level nuclear waste is about 100 and 1 million times more radioactive than natural uranium respectively. Also the amount waste produced by operating a reactor is vastly greater than the amount of fuel used. So a more accurate description would be "taking mildly radioactive material out of the ground and returning a far greater amount of much more radioactive material to the ground" which sounds like the definition of pollution to me.

Standard physics says cold fusion shouldn't work because photon exchanges result in nuclei repelling each other.

However, they think it works here because they think that the palladium atoms are aborbing all the photons which would normally result in the nuclei repelling each other. As a result the nuclei don't exchange photons, so arn't repelled by each other, so they can collide and combine into He.

So, they've somehow developed a lattice who's quantum structure results in creating a barrier between the two nuclei which repels photons, but allows the nuclei to pass through. The nuclei effectivly can't "see" each other until they've already collided.

I found it really interesting that they said they got better results with the impure samples. I did a quick search and discovered that Palladium Ore contains Platinum Certain isotopes of which are radioactive and produce alpha particles (alpha particles = helium).

So, if their impure samples are the ones that are producing the most helium and heat, its possible that it is simply the platinum in the palladium ore which is providing alpha decays, and that is skewing their results.

Its hard to guess if this is really the case though without knowing what kinds of numbers they are getting. How many helium atoms from how much palladium and how much deuterium.

Standard physics says cold fusion shouldn't work because photon exchanges result in nuclei repelling each other.

However, they think it works here because they think that the palladium atoms are aborbing all the photons which would normally result in the nuclei repelling each other. As a result the nuclei don't exchange photons, so arn't repelled by each other, so they can collide and combine into He.

So, they've somehow developed a lattice who's quantum structure results in creating a barrier between the two nuclei which repels photons, but allows the nuclei to pass through. The nuclei effectivly can't "see" each other until they've already collided.

I found it really interesting that they said they got better results with the impure samples. I did a quick search and discovered that Palladium Ore contains Platinum Certain isotopes of which are radioactive and produce alpha particles (alpha particles = helium).

So, if their impure samples are the ones that are producing the most helium and heat, its possible that it is simply the platinum in the palladium ore which is providing alpha decays, and that is skewing their results.

Its hard to guess if this is really the case though without knowing what kinds of numbers they are getting. How many helium atoms from how much palladium and how much deuterium.

Names of minerals are a tricky subject, and there are a lot of fallacies- a mineral may have a chemical composition, a common use name, and belong to a general group of closely-related compounds. Because of this, the guidelines do exist. It's not unlike trying to name a species of organisms.A history of the Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names (CNMMN) demonstrates that this is not a subject touched upon lightly in the scientific world. (this comment is going to have a lot of links, because i'm interested in rocks and minerals. The info may be interesting or, as with the IMA info, useful and particularly relevant, so please bear with me.)

It becomes an issue in the everyday world more than one might expect. For example, i have anAlexandrite ring, a family heirloom. It's gorgeous, it's stunning, and it's a rock rarely seen in the jeweller's.

What's the difference between this and any other cut and polished 'ballistic missile from god'? (thank you, Mr. Watterson, for that beautiful quote.) It's pretty. So people remember it, although most people get it confused with iolite.

Amethyst is just another kind of quartz.

Rocks for which there is no scientific use frequently end up as jewellery, or even bookends, and i guess that's where a lot of the names get dropped. Rhodochrosite becomes 'that pink stone there,' and Calcite becomes (and i do not jest) "Fiberoptic stone," or sometimes "TV stone," or i've even seen it just listed as 'refractive' or 'optical' quartz. (Yeah, i've gotten kicked out of the museum of science gift shop over this one, but they let me back in when i promised to shut up.)

Personally, i think that such uses should involve the chemical composition in the labelling, sonce then people would grow up knowing the difference between nephrite and jadeite, and things labelled 'serpentine' (yes, it also talks about chromium)(see also here)and 'amazonite' would then end up consistently identified. Red ruby would be "ruby- Al2O3" and people would learn to recognise it the way they did the contents of ordinary table salt.

*sigh*

Yeah, i know nobody's going to label Paramelaconite (a tetragonal oxide of copper) for the common consumer... but isn't it a nice thought? For more on the naming of minerals, try and here, and also here, with the International Mineralogical Association.

Names of minerals are a tricky subject, and there are a lot of fallacies- a mineral may have a chemical composition, a common use name, and belong to a general group of closely-related compounds. Because of this, the guidelines do exist. It's not unlike trying to name a species of organisms.A history of the Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names (CNMMN) demonstrates that this is not a subject touched upon lightly in the scientific world. (this comment is going to have a lot of links, because i'm interested in rocks and minerals. The info may be interesting or, as with the IMA info, useful and particularly relevant, so please bear with me.)

It becomes an issue in the everyday world more than one might expect. For example, i have anAlexandrite ring, a family heirloom. It's gorgeous, it's stunning, and it's a rock rarely seen in the jeweller's.

What's the difference between this and any other cut and polished 'ballistic missile from god'? (thank you, Mr. Watterson, for that beautiful quote.) It's pretty. So people remember it, although most people get it confused with iolite.

Amethyst is just another kind of quartz.

Rocks for which there is no scientific use frequently end up as jewellery, or even bookends, and i guess that's where a lot of the names get dropped. Rhodochrosite becomes 'that pink stone there,' and Calcite becomes (and i do not jest) "Fiberoptic stone," or sometimes "TV stone," or i've even seen it just listed as 'refractive' or 'optical' quartz. (Yeah, i've gotten kicked out of the museum of science gift shop over this one, but they let me back in when i promised to shut up.)

Personally, i think that such uses should involve the chemical composition in the labelling, sonce then people would grow up knowing the difference between nephrite and jadeite, and things labelled 'serpentine' (yes, it also talks about chromium)(see also here)and 'amazonite' would then end up consistently identified. Red ruby would be "ruby- Al2O3" and people would learn to recognise it the way they did the contents of ordinary table salt.

*sigh*

Yeah, i know nobody's going to label Paramelaconite (a tetragonal oxide of copper) for the common consumer... but isn't it a nice thought? For more on the naming of minerals, try and here, and also here, with the International Mineralogical Association.

Or the purity can make them the most damage resistant group on the planet.