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1950s Toy That Included Actual Uranium Ore Goes On Display At Museum
hypnosec writes: The Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab — dubbed the world's most dangerous toy — has gone on display at the Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland. The toy earned the title because it includes four types of uranium ore, three sources of radiation, and a Geiger counter that enables parents to measure just how contaminated their child have become. The Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab was only available between 1951 and 1952 and was the most elaborate atomic energy educational kit ever produced. The toy was one of the most costly toys of the time, retailing at $50 — equivalent to around $400 today.
"Perhaps it wouldn’t pass today’s health and safety standards but it is a perfect fit for the Elements exhibition.”
Perhaps? So, it might actually not be that big a deal.
I bullshit you not.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I remember the years between 1951 and 1952 really flew by.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Every time I see a reference to this thing as being the most dangerous toy a lot of people speculate that it would be impossible to get today with today's safety and litigious oriented economy... except that is pretty wrong. When I was a kid in the 90s, I was able to get radioactive sources and uranium for use in a cloud chamber I built. Those things are still available today as I just purchased some sources a year ago for an educational display (price went up, would not be affordable to a middle school student now though, but maybe a determined high school student with a job).
Everything in that kit is available today, just maybe not all packaged together in the same combination. And a lot of it is still sold for educational purposes.
Hey just throw a lead apron in with the kit and it is all good. But really I want one.
I feel cheated. As a kid, all I got was a microscope.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Calling it the most dangerous toy seems like a gross overstatement. Yeah, Uranium ore is scary, but it's a fairly low-level radiation source and as an alpha emitter it's only dangerous internally. Chemical and physical hazards are a lot more serious. Toys with lead paint that kids were likely to chew on were probably more dangerous, not to mention ones that could catch kids on fire (ordinary chemical sets) or get them run over in traffic (like bicycles).
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
"Perhaps it wouldn’t pass today’s health and safety standards..."
Ironically, the "dangerous" toys of the nuclear age have been replaced with the "dangerous" toys of the electronic age.
Physical damage vs. mental/psychological. Pick your poison. In the overall scheme of things, we've probably done far more damage to ourselves with the latter.
Boy, it sure is a good thing that someone is always thinking of the children.
So, I missed this having been born in the late 60s but, at least I was able to have my unsuspecting parents purchase proper chemistry and electronics kits for me. I could stick us out of the house or create and electric fence to keep the cat of my room at night. When I tried to give my son the same opportunity, the offerings that were readily available were either so limited or so expensive as to be useless or prohibitive and useless. Then over the last several years, I've heard tell of kinds taking chemistry lab in high school with very little lab and almost no chems. Just how many rads we talking here?
More dangerous than lawn darts?
http://www.cpsc.gov/PageFiles/122377/5053.pdf
..what made Johnny tick. I'm glad my Dad bought me an Erector set instead (and it made all the difference).
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
People are scared of radiation because they don't understand it.
Rather then educate children todays society is more concerned with protecting them.
Relevant XKCD for dosage information.
I would be interested in how many banana doses of radiation this kit contained.
Everything is radioactive, granite countertops, bananas, sea-salt, living in Denver (higher elevations), hell carbon dating works because all life is radioactive.
How many children died from playing with one of these things compared to the bicycle, trampoline, skateboard or surfboard?
The A.C. Gilbert House and Discovery Center in Salem, Oregon has many of Gilbert's invention, including this toy. I remember seeing it there in the late 90's and again when I visited about 4-5 years ago. If you're in Salem, it's worth a visit.
Growing up in Jamaica the physics and chem labs in high school were originally outfitted via the old colonial (UK) school system. I recall one occurrence where we were given free range to rummage around in the lab supply room and found a geiger counter which included three radiation sources one alpha, one beta, and a gamma source of radiation all enclosed in lead lined boxes. of course without reading the instructions we just opened the boxes and pulled out the 25 cent sized disks. It wasn't until the smart kid in the group read the instructions that we realized the inherent danger. I also remember playing with samples of mercury, sodium, and making our own gun powder using the formulas in our chemistry books.
So many parents assiduously sanitize every damned surface their precious child might come into contact with, their immune system becomes hyper sensitive to everything and they grow up to have so many allergies. That behavior has harmed and is harming more children today than this toy ever did, or this toy ever could.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I don't mean to be pedantic, but I wonder how one would qualify it as the "World's Most Dangerous Toy."
Plastic bags and pools are quite dangerous to unattended children. Yet, how could quantify the dangerousness of different toys? Hours of play per injury? How many hours of play would it take before the probability of injury or death approached 1? You'd probably also have to consider distribution of said toy.
Buckyballs became ubiquitous in offices, but how many children played with them - especially given the number of warnings the firm gave before they went out of business. I'm guessing that five minutes of play with a one year old will likely result in swallowing a buckyball. Also, if you google for "most dangerous toy," you'll find a spy kit with asbestos in the finger printing powder. How dangerous is that per minute of play? My guess both buckyballs and the asbestos kit are way more harmful than any low-level radiation from this toy, which would take several days to years to cause harm.
It would probably be a horrible statistic to actually calculate, but I wonder what the real most dangerous toy is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
More seriously, I had a friend who had a chemistry set with a few CCs of nitric acid as part of the experiments. I remember my dad first being appalled and then showed us nitrocellulose (Kleenex and nitric acid) and how it was great for magic shows.
It's only fun if you can lose an eye.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Reading all the replies so far, maybe we can have a vote on what's most dangerous:
- Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab.
- Anything by Mainway Toys (SNL)
- Lawn Darts
- Chemistry sets
- Electrical kits
- Bicycles (and motorbikes)
- Scooters
- Archery kits
- etc.
Danger is/should be part of growing up.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I think those who are dubbing it "most dangerous" are the types that think that radiation is some unnatural, dangerous thing that only exists in nuclear bombs.
For an excellent and informative video on the various levels of radiation (and how overblown fears of radiation are) take a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=Ac9x8KzXoa0&u=/watch?v%3DTRL7o2kPqw0%26feature%3Dshare
"Do not taunt Super Happy Atomic Energy Lab"
Proverbs 21:19
I always loved this book should be easy to find in torrents or downloads.
The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments [Banned in the 60s].pdf
- them internets
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
in the hands of a normal 8 year old child. Cthluhu only knows how we survived our childhood.
I would really love a list of toys that cause mental/psychological damage.
Off the top of my head...
Hinton's Cubes
Lament Configuration
My First Waterboard Funtime set.
Am I missing any?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I saw this same toy in the "Banned Toy" exhibit in the PEZ museum in Burlingame, CA about a year ago. I loved the artwork on it, it looks very 1950's. It looks like it's still on exhibit there: http://www.burlingamepezmuseum...
800 volts on the plates of all those old heathkit transmitters using 6146 tubes. 3000 on most linear amps. ooh, and dig those metal-ceramic power tubes with beryllium oxide ceramics, or the insulator blocks for conducted cooling tubes being beryllium oxide.
or hunting. those .22 rifles can put an eye out!
scouting, perhaps? axes, knives, and pack saws, not to mention building fires.
I won't even start with farm kids, all those types of poo, power take-offs, barn roofs, tools, welders...
and this texting and Facebook thing, well, get somebody riled enough to punch you into Jello.
there is always a way for a kid to get into trouble. don't leave them to the TV, be around and guide them.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Working power drill press, wood lathe, jig saw, sanding disk.
Or, the Thingmaker die caster with high temp exposed parts?
Heaven forefend that we give our kids toys that let them learn useful things.
Can anyone even do woodburning crafts anymore?
You don't have to go far - just take the americium for a smoke detector and you've got a radiation source.
Or you can buy it from the US Atomic Energy Commission for $1500 per gram. Or you can order (really) small amounts online, exempt from USNRC and State licensing. They produce sufficient count-rate to check survey meters or conduct most nuclear science experiments in normal lab periods using standard Geiger Mueller counters or scintillation detectors, yet low enough so as not to present any radiation hazard.
Or you can order directly from the government. Now that I've done all those searches for "radioisotopes for sale" I'm probably on a few watch lists :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I think it is outrageous and disheartening the attitude of the media towards chemistry and the efforts of schools and reporters to terrify people of chemicals and issue these hysterical claims that are based on ignorance.
The materials and and equipment in that kit were completely harmless. Implying that a spinthariscope is dangerous is completely irresponsible. Likewise uranium is completely harmless. You can find many common, everyday articles, like bananas, that have more radiation than uranium ore.
This kind of anti-science propaganda is driving kids out of chemistry and physics classes and destroying what little is left of America's old can-do spirit.
Really? Something that costed the purchasing-power-equivalent of 400 bucks is one of the most expensive toys of its time?
Toys sure got more expensive with time...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Got a source to back up your claim that this is what it was for or was that just added for sensationalist purposes?
This toy is incredibly dangerous because uranium is toxic. While it is only 1/10th as toxic as something like arsenic, it is almost as toxic as aspirin. A child ingesting that uranium may very well die. On a completely unrelated note: uranium is radioactive too.
Data:
LD50 of arsenic: 15mg/kg
LD50 of uranium: 115mg/kg
LD50 of aspirin: 200mg/kg
Sources:
http://whs.rocklinusd.org/docu...
http://www.who.int/ionizing_ra...
United NuclearCarries pretty much all you would ever want, more than that kit had. Strangely enough, its not the radioactive things they find most dangerous. Its the rare earth magnets
NOTE: While it's not VERY radioactive is still IS radioactive. Don't plan a long camping trip there, or decide carry a piece of it around in your pocket. Ummm... I guess unless you like having tumors.
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
You're a chump if you believe the hype. Very few of these were ever turned into bombs to blow up the neighborhood. This is just a prime example to people over-reacting to great toys that should be encouraged, not discouraged. If anyone managed to hurt themselves with one of these they should get a well deserved Darwin Award.
I actually had one, a hand-me-down from an older cousin (I have no idea how it was purchased in the first place, as no one in the family had that kind of money). I don't remember the ore (maybe I never got that), but I still have the Alpha, Beta and Gamma sources. The Gamma source had a half-life of a year and was pretty burnt out by the time that I got it, but the Alpha source had a 50 year half-life and I expect that it is still very detectable.
This wasn't the only "toy" that included uranium ore. The old American Basic Science Club kit was sold well into the 1970's or so and included both an Alpha source and some uranium ore. Experiments included making a cloud chamber and using the ore to image a key or other small metal device to photographic paper and then developing the image. I got my ABSC kit new, not second hand. And yes, I still have that little plastic bag of uranium ore, as well as the alpha source. But I'm not as likely to call in the has-mat people over it as the people over reacting to this story.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Damn, and here I was going to have some delivered to the Whitehouse.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you want a really awesome chemistry set, you can buy one:
http://hms-beagle.com/heirloom-chemistry-set/
This was a KickStarter project. He was trying to raise $30K and he raised almost five times that much.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1742632993/heirloom-chemistry-set
If you can't afford the full set, contact the store; the web page says they can sell any subset of the kit.
Hmm, if I ever make it to Kansas City I will try to go check out the H.M.S. Beagle science store.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The fact that it is even called 'the most dangerous toy' is evidence that some people need a serious beating.
Yeah, sure, "Radiation!!!" is scary; but low level sources are pretty tepid unless you do your best to consume them(and sometimes even then) and 'uranium ore' can(depending on source and quality) be about as geiger-counter-clicking as a nice, safe, granite building. It's trivially apparent that any toy that constituted a decent choking hazard was orders of magnitude more hazardous.
HOLY SHAZBOT!!
Why'd you have to go and bring that up?! At least we'll always have Big Bertha.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You don't have to go far - just take the americium for a smoke detector and you've got a radiation source.
4.47 billion years. No one rational is afraid of it's radioactivity - it's entirely scare-mongering. This is why no one cares about the uranium in granite countertops. Especially the scare-mongering over depleted uranium being somehow seen as more toxic than lead is entirely political theater ungrounded in any science.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When it says "the most dangerous toy" I laughed thinking this product never disabled kids or sent them to the hospital like LAWN DARTS (Jarts) which was responsible for 1000's of injures and even disabilities... don't know if any one died but this toy was certainly much more dangerous that the kits described in the article.
Once again, slashcode blows goats. Instead of Beta, how about we get the ability to edit posts?
You don't have to go far - just take the americium for a smoke detector and you've got a radiation source.
The most stable isotope of americium (243) has a half-life of 7370 years, so barely radioactive (not sure what they use in smoke detectors, but even 242 has a half-life of 141 years and thus isn't exactly hot.
Uranium 238, which is the vast majority of natural uranium (and basically all of "depleted" uranium) has a half-life of 4.47 billion years. No one rational is afraid of it's radioactivity - it's entirely scare-mongering. This is why no one cares about the uranium in granite countertops. Especially the scare-mongering over depleted uranium being somehow seen as more toxic than lead is entirely political theater ungrounded in any science.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Not only can kids not obtain such neato experiementation kits anymore, but the lack of radiation means fewer random neuronal firings, which used to make us more creative!
And if you think that little bit of Uranium ore is so dangerous in theat toy. let's talk about those nice granite countertops and kitchen islands.
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/t...
And that's a pretty hedged site - don't want to upset the Real Estate and Construction industry. They don't note the mining, cutting and polishing of the granite.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Carrying it in your pocket could become the latest birth control technique :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
New York State Health Department research scientist Michael Kitto, PhD, says only a small fraction of the granite samples he has tested have emitted radon at levels that were over those considered safe.
But he added that a few of his samples showed levels that were high enough to alarm him.
“I wouldn’t have them in my house,” Kitto tells WebMD.
Rice University physics professor William Llope, PhD, found potentially dangerous levels of radiation in some tested samples of granite used in countertops.
. Not all granite is the same.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
When I was a child, we used to find old light switches and break them open to play with the mercury in them. But it did eventually kill me.
The Pez Museum in Burlingame, CA (about 30 minutes south of San Francisco), has a banned toy section and already has one of the atomic labs kids and also some lawn darts. The guy that ran the museum branched into banned toys when trying to complete his collection a few of the Pez dispensers were very difficult to find because they were banned due to having small parts that were way to easy to swallow. If you have one banned toy, you might as well collect the rest, right?
Reading about this reminded me of the rocket souvenir from Fallout New Vegas.
The fact that it is even called 'the most dangerous toy' is evidence that some people need a serious beating.
No, what they deserve is for you & I to demonstrate to them the dangers of law darts ;-)
As a child (probably late ‘30s, early ‘40s) my grandfather and his brothers were given a chunk of uranium and Geiger counter as toys with which to play hide-and-seek. His father was a nuclear physicist, so I suppose he figured it would be a fun educational experience. Anyway, as others have said calling highly dangerous is simply clickbait hyperbole, but it’s an interesting artifact from a bygone era.
Since natural uranium has a half life measured in billions of years, the only way it could kill you in five minutes is if a significantly large chunk of it fell on your head from a great height....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You can, like, pick up uranium ore from the ground. If you happen to be standing in the right place. *picks up rock* Look, it's uranium ore. And you're surrounded by all kinds of radiation sources. Bricks. Bananas. Smoke detectors. Sunlight. Horror. The Geiger counter is there to help the child understand what they're holding, not for parents to measure how contaminated their child has become. Please... Let's over-react some more.
You can get those materials, just not for a toy intended for unsupervised children. You can get many dangerous things sold for educational purposes, if you go through educational catalogs (ie, most chemistry labs for high school use have many things you wouldn't want a kid to buy at the local now-defunct Radio Shack).
Americium 241 is a crappy test for Geiger counters, especially in smoke detectors. It is typically wrapped up in a canister that is a pin to open, and mainly an alpha source that a lot of Geiger counters are not sensitive to unless they have a decent mica window on them (more expensive and fragile). Like most alpha and beta sources, it also emits gammas too, but the 60 keV gammas from Am 241 barely shows up on a lot of Geiger counters. With a scintillating counter on the other hand, I can tell if I am standing within 5-10 ft of a smoke detector (or brick wall, something else that doesn't show up on GM counters), but they also register ~100 counts per second with plain background.
Potassium 40 on the other hand is a nice source of 1.5 MeV gammas and 1.3 MeV betas that will show up on a GM counter, even if a bit slow. Also what tends to show up if you point a cheap GM counter at a chunk of granite, as they won't pick up the small amounts of uranium very well, but will pick up potassium in some kinds of granite.
Am I missing any?
Open up that box marked "toys" under your mom's side of the bed. If that's not bad enough, open up the box marked "toys" under your dad's side of the bed! o.O
Especially the scare-mongering over depleted uranium being somehow seen as more toxic than lead is entirely political theater ungrounded in any science.
Not all heavy metal poisoning is the same.
Learn to love Alaska
Bah, it's all strap-ons and butt plugs on both sides.
(I have no idea how it was purchased in the first place, as no one in the family had that kind of money)
This is why they were quite rare, because they were so expensive, no one bought one, and they were only made for about a year before stopping production. Other kits with just the ore and sources (e.g. cloud chamber kits) and without the Geiger counter were way cheaper.
but the Alpha source had a 50 year half-life and I expect that it is still very detectable.
22 years for Pb210. One thing that has been constant over more than 50 years, is that the only license exempt purified alpha source is Pb210 & Po210.
According to this article lawn darts killed 4 people (3 of them children) and injured 6700 before they were banned. The article ranks them as the most dangerous toy.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Buckyballs have to be the most dangerous thing known to man (recently) as they are both tasty and highly magnetic. It is important that we recall them all and make one giant cube that will attract planes flying over the area.
Warning, do not use as cake decoration.
The big educational science suppliers will ask for some paperwork to prove you are with a school when trying to order certain chemical supplies and glassware. They don't when you order a cloud chamber with a source (or source kit), and the cloud chamber comes with instructions directed at a kid ("Ask for help using drying ice"). I know from experience having bought both recently for outreach work and use person credit card to buy things (less paperwork to get reimbursed for program than trying to buy through my employer's purchasing directly).
I grew up in Port Hope, Canada, where Eldorado Mining and Refining was located on Lake Ontario... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... http://www.toxipedia.org/displ... In 1969 worked for one year at a factory in town called Westinghouse Atomics that made the fuel rods for CANDU reactors... https://books.google.co.uk/boo... http://www.world-nuclear.org/i... Eldorado used to dump truckloads of refined uranium on the loading dock of Westinghouse, which I could watch from my work station, which was then scooped up and eventually turned into round ceramic-like pellets 1cm x 2cm. These were inserted into 2 foot long zirconium tubes. Bundles of the tubes were made to insert into the 50 foot long zirconium calandria tubes in the reactor core. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... I thought I was quite clever when I snuck one of the pellets out. We all had radiation badges, but no one actually checked them. Everyone that I knew who worked there for a long time eventually died young of some type of cancer. I only worked directly with uranium for 6 months, but in my late 50s I developed rheumatoid arthritis, which apparently is rather unusual. They used to dump waste sludge behind our high school, where we all went to smoke dope after class. Subsequently there was a massive cleanup in many areas of the town. http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content... https://books.google.co.uk/boo... http://www.world-nuclear.org/i... How does all this relate to the original topic? Well, at the time, everyone thought it was harmless, like the toy. Everyone I worked with at the time could be called a chav or a redneck or a good old boy - some of them were really good people, some not so. But Hey, it took me 6 effin months of handling uranium pellets to finally realize that this might not be the best way to spend my life making money, so I quit. The rest of them believed the company line that everything was safe. https://www.google.co.uk/url?s... cheers
keep little Timmy distracted and quiet. Forever.
Fair enough. I know refined uranium is much, much more radioactive (I would assume mostly because it's nothing but Uranium, so it has a much higher concentration of radioactive particles). I'm assuming exposure to that would be of much greater significance that picking up a piece of uranium ore that has very little actual uranium in it! Of course, we're rapidly arriving at the limit of my knowledge of refined uranium, so I'll be the first to admit I don't know what I'm talking about! :D
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Raw uranium ores are a lot more radioactive than pure uranium oxides like yellowcake (U3O8) because of all the shorter-lived isotopes that have built up in the ore bodies from a billion years or so of decays of U-235 (700 million years) and U-238 (over 4 billion years). The other thing is that solid lumps of uranium are a good shield against radiation and the alpha particles resulting from decay events a millimetre or two under the surface are unlikely to escape the lump of metal and be dangerous.
I was born slightly too late to buy a "spinthariscope," a toy consisting of a zinc sulfide screen, a loupe-like magnifying glass, and a radiation source--quite possibly radium.
So, I made my own. We had a microscope, I had a Westclox Baby Ben with a luminous dial, I used a penknife to chip off a bit of the luminous paint, put it under the microscope, and turned out the light. Instead of a glowing dial, I could now see, clearly, individual flashes of lights.
I don't know where the Gilbert kit fits on the scale of danger, but I also had a geiger counter kit, and the instruction booklet had directions for how to keep records of background radiation and detect fallout from bomb tests. On the whole, I think we were subjected to more danger from bomb tests than from science kits.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Swimming pools kill more kids every year than just about anything else.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I'd imagine more harmful to ingest/inhale uranium ore... in addition to radioactivity, uranium is also a heavy metal like lead. (in both senses of the term "heavy metal".)
However most ore is quite weak, with 1% being pretty decent... I think it's economical to mine it as low as 0.1%. A few mines in Canada are near 20%, though (which I suppose is related to Canada being the biggest producer... 1/5th the ore is end product, instead of 1/1000th!). Ore will often have lead and such in it as well (decay products), which is also toxic.
Sent from my PDP-11
As to "refined" uranium, that depends on whether "refined" really means "enriched".
U-235 has a much shorter half-life, hence a much higher radioactivity. "Natural" uranium (almost entirely U238) might be radioactive enough to be a problem if you have a few kilos under your bed for twenty years or so. Or not. A similar amount of U235 would be...bad.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Dozens of places in Colorado have the same kind of rock. Gold Hill or Jamestown, both just west of Boulder have hot spots from gold / tungsten / uranium mines that will kick a Geiger counter on moderate sensitivity. Still not very dangerous unless you fall head first on the rock, but fun to show the tourists.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I would really love a list of toys that cause mental/psychological damage.
Off the top of my head...
Hinton's Cubes
Lament Configuration
My First Waterboard Funtime set.
Am I missing any?
How about Top Ten Unsafe Toys for Christmas From David Letterman and The Late Show:
10. Junior Electrician Outlet Panel
9. Hasbro’s Slippery Steps
8. Black & Decker Silly Driller
7. Roof Hanger Paratrooper Outfit
6. Remco’s Pocket Hive
5. Traffic Tag
4. Will It Burn? From Parker Brothers
3. Chimney Explorer
2. My First Ferret Farm
1. Ooh – You’re Blue!, the Hold-Your-Breath Game
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Better hurry. The DOE has been cleaning up the tailings pile for several years. Most of it has been hauled away and buried at a disposal site near Crescent Junction, Utah.
Anything with a "Frozen" princess on?
When I was a kid we used to catch flying lawn darts with our hands. They didn't seem that dangerous to me - I still have all my fingers and no large piercings or body modifications from the diversion.
After the Curies discovered radium, there have been commercials for skin cream with radium inside. Lookup for "skin cream radium" in your favorite search engine, and see the pictures!
Especially the scare-mongering over depleted uranium being somehow seen as more toxic than lead is entirely political theater ungrounded in any science.
Not all heavy metal poisoning is the same.
True. Lead poisoning is well understood, and has been for thousands of years. However, uranium toxicity has never been responsible for a single recorded death of a human. Ingested uranium was even used in the treatment of diabetes before the discovery of insulin.
John
You can buy uranium on Amazon.
Also the linked page is broken. Just comes up blank.
Or just buy it from Amazon
This is the chemistry set I had circa 1967 https://12angrymen.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/endangered-species-the-chemistry-set/ with radioactive samples and a glass blowing set.
U-235 has a much shorter half-life, hence a much higher radioactivity.
Not really. It is still 700 million years for U235. A few times almost no radiation is still almost nothing.
A few kilos of uranium would be no worse than sleeping over a pile of bananas.
Its things like radium and plutonium, that are orders of magnitude more unstable, where you need to start considering the hazard.
Trade my set of lawn darts for one of these...my kids want to try something new...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I was reminded of one of those cracker jacks toys, A tiny spring loaded gun intended to shoot strike anywhere matches.
I know times and attitudes change, but I can't help thinking we made a wrong turn somewhere between the match gun and the end of lawn darts.
Once again, slashcode blows goats. Instead of Beta, how about we get the ability to edit posts?
You have a six digit ID so you ought to know why this is how it is. If it was that big deal you'd have left by now. Let it be.
ahh...back in the day when "get off my lawn" could be backed up with an aerial barrage.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
A few kilos of uranium would be no worse than sleeping over a pile of bananas.
A kilo of pure U238 would still be about 12 MBq of activity, while a banana is about 15 Bq. So to get equivalent activity, you would need nearly a million bananas, or at ~120 g per banana, almost 100 metric tons of bananas. If assuming they were about the density of water (an overestimate), that is larger than the volume of a 40 ft shipping container, which to most people is a bit more than "a pile of bananas."
And that is a conservative estimate, as you wouldn't have a pure block of U238 very long. U238 decays to Th234 which has a 24 day half-life, then Pa234m with ~1 minute half-life, then Pa234 with a ~7 hr half-life, before finally getting another long lived isotope, U234. While U238 decays by alpha decay, the rest of the steps are almost are beta decays (some at almost twice the energy of K40's beta decay). Plus beta and alpha decays produce a bunch of lower energy gamma rays too, as they don't always decay into the ground state of a nucleus.
So one kilo of U238 that has reached a relative steady state decay into U234 will have a total activity of ~50 MBq, now up to several shipping containers worth of bananas to get equivalent activity. If you wanted an equivalent amount of energy released, you would need ~3.5 times as the 100 metric ton quote above, so now up to 350 metric tons of bananas.
U235 at least decays into a long lived isotope after two steps, and the intermediate product is only a low energy beta decay, so despite having six times quicker direct decay, it is closer to about twice as active and has much, much less non-alpha energy than U238.
Actually, refined or enriched uranium still isn't very radioactive, you can handle fuel pellets for a nuclear reactor with your hands without much of a problem (other than issues for how you would handle lead, since it is still a heavy metal for toxicity purposes).
It's after they've been in the reactor, and have had some fission going on, that you don't want to get anywhere near them. It's the fission fragments, the pieces that are left over after uranium is split that are far more radioactive. Heavy elements need a higher neutron to proton ratio to be stable than stable lighter elements do. (band of stability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... ). So when you end up splitting a heavy element, you end up with lighter elements that have a lot more neutrons than what would be stable for them, and they decay from there.
It can get worse, it might not kill. I was a normal ÃYild, my mother hoped that one day I'd see my way to become a doctor or a lawyer, but an evil uncle gave me a very comprehensive chemical kit and 1 Kg of mercury, to "play with".ÃPlay with it I did - a great way to clean our your work bench. I also got into the habit of chewing on lead sheathing, of phone wires all that and rocketry before I was 10. The tragedy was long in the making, my Mother's hopes dashed, I became a mathematician instead of someone of stature and substance and then i threw the good education away and went slumming with people doing incomprehensible things with "computers". Life ruined, all because of dangerous toys.
Of course, that was before "Jackass" and similar concurrent epidemics of stupid.
Someone had to do it.
I was going to say something similar. Radon is nasty stuff, ask people living in parts of Michigan where they need to have mandatory venting in houses for it. There's even a few places here in Ontario where radon venting is mandatory in your house, most of the southern part of the province has 50-800m of limestone over the bedrock and that's not enough to prevent seepage.
Om, nomnomnom...
Especially the scare-mongering over depleted uranium being somehow seen as more toxic than lead is entirely political theater ungrounded in any science.
As a weapon depleted uranium is one of the most insidious and makes landmines look positively benign in comparison. It may be ok when used in crockery or bench tops when kept sealed up however when it is fired from a tank its pyrophoric properties make it particulate in the environment and it becomes a serious threat.
Veterans of both gulf wars suffering 'Gulf War Syndrome' are, in reality, suffering from inhaling radioisotopes, i.e. radiation poisoning. A 1998 report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances confirms that inhaling DU causes symptoms identical to those claimed by many sick vets with Gulf War Syndrome. So they may not be casualties of the war in Iraq, but they suffer for the rest of their lives when they get home due to their own government's policy to deploy du weapons, which is a war crime under UN conventions. That's the effect on the soldiers just for firing the weapons.
However the people on the receiving end of the weapons will suffer for much longer. That is because it is not immediately toxic to full grown adults who ingest it, only to their children. Since du's half life is measured in billions of years Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer these deformities for all subsequent generations. So will Veteran's families.
For a comparison, about 50 kilograms of uranium were used to bomb Japan and over one thousand tons of DU in Iraq. This is how nuclear waste is being used and what a 'dirty' nuclear war looks like. I don't think the claim that there is no grounding in science has a basis however the effects are plain to see. I agree that it is political theater, based on concealing and deceiving people into what is being done in their name.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It's the failure to analyze risk with some degree of perspective and avoidance of hysteria that really annoys me. Many aspects of the good old days were, in fact, bad (eg. the fact that the went around huffing tetraethyl lead combustion products basically all the time as though that were a good idea). Others offend the squeamish but start to look pretty harmless when you ask around about any actual, verified, injuries that they are supposed to have caused.
Mindless celebration of risk as some sort of virtue is puerile nonsense; but flinching before you've even determined that a risk is real is even worse.
Be careful with disassembling smoke detectors. First, americium is extremely toxic, like polonium. Second, the amount of americium-241 contained within may exceed the licensing exempt quantity when removed from a smoke detector, depending on your jurisdiction.
Be relentless!
> The toy was one of the most costly toys of the time, retailing at $50 — equivalent to around $400 today.
Off topic, but I can't let it pass. Sorry.
Calculated based on published US government CPI figures, $50 in 1951 was the equivalent of $466 in 2014 (latest figures published). If you are paying the slightest attention, however, you know gov. CPI figures are crap. I know, for example that the house my parents bought in 1954 cost them under $7000. The same house today would cost over $250K (in a not especially hot market)
There's a guy making a living out of providing accurate figures to businesses who need better data that the US government is willing to provide. Using his CPI figures (from shadowstats.com) is eye-opening. That atomic energy lab would be selling for over $2000 today. No wonder I didn't get one!
Nope, since you're not making uranium foil most of the emitted particles in the kilo of U238 would be stopped before leaving the surface, mostly alphas which can't even penetrate your skin. We're back to order of magnititude of truckload of banana type activity.
Or SNL's Bag o' glass.
You do not appear to understand that the "banana dose" assumes that all potassium in a banana is a rare radioactive isotope instead of what is actually found in quantity in bananas.
The "banana dose" was a bit of misdirection to assist public relations and was never intended to be taken seriously. I'm pretty sure that even wikipedia corrects the deliberate myth of the "banana dose".
Toy guns seem to be pretty dangerous. At least cops seem to have been shooting several people the last few months while holding one.
But they only killed STUPID people. The Gilbert kit could be dangerous to kids interested in science!
Pets.
"Oh look, the staffie/pitbull/etc has eaten little Chardonnay's face... "
It's not too long ago kids would play in the road.
The famous "banana dose" relies on the false assumption that all Potassium in a banana is Potassium-40.
It was a tool of a public relations campaign about the safety of nuclear waste and is almost certain to be a deliberate mistake in order to skew any comparisons and make things look as if they are far less radioactive than they are.
subject says it all.. some of us got lucky:)
Depleted uranium is not meaningfully radioactive.
First of all we are talking about depleted uranium's behavior as a radio isotope once its absorbed in the body, not the radiation it emits when it is outside the body - where it is harmless.
Not to mention those "on the receiving end" of a 10 kg projectile travelling at ~1000 meters per second don't suffer for long at all. When you start comparing bullets to nuclear bombs, you should really stop and realize you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Once the projectile has hit its target (or not) the du doesn't cease to exist. It is smashed and burned into varying size chunks of du all the way down to dust. So those targeted don't suffer for very long however those who breath in the dust do, including those who fire the weapons. I could say the same for your discussion of radiation vs radionuclide, however I choose to politely point out the facts, rather than launch into a rant.
Science more; don't come back till you do.
Ok, There is plenty of science. It is a commonly held myth that because du is harmless outside the body, it is harmless *inside* the body but it isn't.
I took this from the U.S Library of Medicine describing the effects of radionuclides in the body and it applies to a range of radionuclides, including u-238. From my understanding the main vector for absorbing u238 is inhalation, specifically uranium oxide however there are others. Only 10 electron volts of energy is required to break DNA or other molecules in the body. U238 is a alpha particle emitter of 4.2 million electron volts (MeV) per particle there is very little doubt as to the damage it does:
Systemic contamination will occur following ingestion, inhalation, skin absorption, or wound contamination of radioactive material. Following absorption, a radionuclide crosses capillary membranes through passive and active diffusion mechanisms and then is distributed throughout the body. Rate of distribution to each organ is dependent on organ metabolism, ease of chemical transport, and the affinity of the radionuclide for chemicals within the organ. The organs with the highest capacities for binding radionuclides are the liver, kidney, adipose tissue, and bone due to their high protein and lipid makeup. Each radionuclide has a unique half-life, with half-lives ranging from extremely short (fraction of a second) to millions of years. Samples of some radionuclides and their half-lives are: Tc-99m: 6 hours; I-131: 8.05 days; Co-60: 5.26 years; Sr-90: 28.1 years; Pu-239: 24,400 years; U-238: 4,150,000,000 years.
That makes the rest of your screed lies, bullshit, and stupidity. you should really stop and realize you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You're an embarrassment to Slashdot, and that's a really low bar.
I was polite to you yet you feel perfectly justified in being a cunt to me. I just thought you didn't know and it was a difference of opinion. I've come to expect this as a fairly typical response from someone without much in the way of fact available to counter my arguments and they just attack me instead. If you can't back up what you say with fact, or change my mind, then why be a cunt to me instead?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Veterans of both gulf wars suffering 'Gulf War Syndrome' are, in reality, suffering from inhaling radioisotopes, i.e. radiation poisoning. A 1998 report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances confirms that inhaling DU causes symptoms identical to those claimed by many sick vets with Gulf War Syndrome. So they may not be casualties of the war in Iraq, but they suffer for the rest of their lives when they get home due to their own government's policy to deploy du weapons, which is a war crime under UN conventions. That's the effect on the soldiers just for firing the weapons.
Depleted uranium is carcinogenic, causes brain damage and reproductive organ failure among other nasty things. Not because of it's radiation but because it's a really nasty toxin, and the reaction products aren't nice either.
Chemical problems, not radioactive.
For a comparison, about 50 kilograms of uranium were used to bomb Japan and over one thousand tons of DU in Iraq. This is how nuclear waste is being used and what a 'dirty' nuclear war looks like. I don't think the claim that there is no grounding in science has a basis however the effects are plain to see. I agree that it is political theater, based on concealing and deceiving people into what is being done in their name.
The radioactivity of nuclear bombs is different from normal decay. The type of radioactivity in nukes is not relevant if you're not busy getting the mass to critical. The DU in Iraq is spread over a large surface area. It's nowhere near going critical.
Ergo the radiation source of a nuclear bomb is not relevant to the discussion.
It's like we are talking about being killed by licking the contacts of a bare wire and you think of lightning strikes. Different source, different scale and different just-about-everything.
Having said all that, the US are not exactly playing nice with their DU projectiles. It could plausibly be called chemical warfare and just about as illegal as the use of mustard gas.
However, who is going to arrest the US president for it? Do you have any idea what kind of international problems that might cause?
The world is a playground and the US is the strongest kid. If you play along with what the US wants there is no problem, but nobody is going to attack them except the joker.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
You appear to have just had your ass handed to you. Ouch.
Yes my point is the infamous banana dose with the false assumption is inflated by about four significant digits based on that 0.0117%. A pretty huge "mistake" for the sake of PR a few decades back.
The final sentence sounds incredibly unlikely. Add up those numbers you've got and compare them to a granite countertop or a bucket of beach sand - then consider the wisdom of setting sensors to go off at that level. Surely if it's "capable" then some bananas must have set off a detector at least once, which surely would have been documented somewhere and even got some press because it so weird - yet somehow we've never heard about it. Funny about that isn't it?
U238 would be stopped before leaving the surface, mostly alphas which can't even penetrate your skin.
You obviously didn't read the whole comment, or even most of it, before replying. Some quotes from the comment you replied to, emphasis added (and one typo fixed):
While U238 decays by alpha decay, the rest of the steps are almost all beta decays
(Th234 and Pa234 are all beta decay, Pa234m is a beta decay 99.8% of the time. For every alpha emitted, there are nearly 3 betas, so not even close to "mostly alphas")
Plus beta and alpha decays produce a bunch of lower energy gamma rays too
(You'll get low energy gammas from nearly every decay. Ever try to measure the Am241 from a smoke detector? You can do it from several feet away from a scintillator counter which is sensitive to low energy gammas, even though the alphas from a Am241 never make it out of the smoke detector's casing.)
If you wanted an equivalent amount of energy released, you would need ~3.5 times as the 100 metric ton quote above, so now up to 350 metric tons of bananas.
Checking the numbers here, 3.5 times as much energy, requiring 350 metric tons of bananas, is completely ignoring alphas. That is just the energy from beta decays in a U238 sample that is a couple of months old. If you counted the alpha particles too, you would need to add another 200 metric tons of bananas to get the same energy of emitted particles.
So the comment you are replying to already took into account it is not a foil, by excluding alphas from one of the comparison and by taking the time to explain that things other than alphas come out.
Depleted uranium is not meaningfully radioactive. Far less so than a banana.
Bananas have an activity of ~120 Bg/kg, while depleted uranium has activity of about 36 MBq/kg, and even if you ignore alpha decays, you still get about 24 MBq/kg of beta decays, plus various low energy gammas. About half of the betas coming out of a brick of U238 is twice the energy of the K40 betas.
The radioactivity, either in terms of activity, energy, even ignoring alphas, for depleted uranium is nearly five orders of magnitude stronger than a banana.
those "on the receiving end" of a 10 kg projectile travelling at ~1000 meters per second don't suffer for long at all.
You seem to have missed the point that the Gulf veterans who fired the projectiles are also suffering from the side effects of depleted uranium use. If the DU just made better bullets or shells then disappeared there wouldn't be a problem.
But you just carry on parrotting the Military-Industrial complex line like a good boy, Gulf War Syndrome is purely imaginary.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Depleted uranium is carcinogenic, causes brain damage and reproductive organ failure among other nasty things. Not because of it's radiation but because it's a really nasty toxin, and the reaction products aren't nice either.
Chemical problems, not radioactive.
The problem is that anyone who criticises anything even tangentially related to a radioactive substance is labelled as an anti-science bleeding heart liberal hippy on slashdot.
The group think here is that because depleted uranium is not virulently radioactive, therefore any attempt to suggest it is responsible for Gulf War Syndrome is nothing but a revolutionary left wing attack on the glorious Western military machine, with no basis in reality.
Nobody has suggested that the depleted uranium was causing direct radiation poisoning just by being near it. It's a combination of handling a poison, and blowing that poison up and dispersing it in the air for people to breathe that is the problem.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
One gram is enough to make 3,000,000 smoke detectors.It not only doesn't exceed licensing requirements, you're allowed to throw smoke detectors in the regular trash.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulates the radioactive materials in smoke detectors. Because the amount of americium in these devices is so small, NRC's regulations exempt individuals purchasing smoke detectors from licensing requirements including those related to disposal of radioactive materials. You can dispose of single, household smoke detectors as ordinary trash.
And if you're going to use the Americium as a radiation source, you don't have to remove it from the material it's electroplated to.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I guess unless you like having tumors.
At first I didn't like the idea of having tumors, but it's growing on me.
Most of what I've read about DU compares it to lead. When you vaporize it, or fragment it; it pollutes the environment with a known neural poison. Vaporization and fragmentation are common when used with munitions. I haven't seen any other references to problems with DU. These are comparable to problems with lead. I sure wouldn't want either being spread around my neighborhood.
Cheap storage VM.
not dangerous to vets if you give them expensive DNA testing of their sperm...
In the 1970s I built a cloud chamber kit from Edmund Scientific--and it included a baggie of Uranium ore and a bit of Radium paint on a pin. Now I am plotting evil world-domination schemes.
The first thing I ever bought my wife was a peice of orange fiestaware. Not very romantic to most, but she was a science teacher and she knew I was a nerd. The fiestaware strongly sets the Geiger counter off. You can buy it at swap meets all over the US.
Uranium is a heavy metal. Don't ingest those. Lead bullets? Also a heavy metal. Nothing to do with radioactivity, because U238 isn't meaningfully radioactive.
No, I'm not going to teach you basic science. This is /., you're expect to do that work yourself.
You're scare-mongering about an imaginary boogieman and need to be shunned from polite conversation, just like the anti-Vaxxers, the anti-GMO crowd, the "no irradiated food" crowd and the rest of them.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I would really love a list of toys that cause mental/psychological damage.
Off the top of my head... Hinton's Cubes Lament Configuration My First Waterboard Funtime set.
Am I missing any?
Well, yeah, according to the media:
Call of Duty (which one? all of them)
Grand Theft Auto (yeah, don't ask...all of them)
Am I missing some others that somehow lead to mass shootings and suing the maker of the gun? I'm sure I am.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm prepping my lawsuit against the stainless steel distributor. See, I gained 30 pounds last year eating with a metal fork so naturally I had to find someone to blame.
Primarily because the poster in question used the phrase "radiation poisoning". He dropped a line about similarities to Gulf War Syndrome then doubled down on the radiation poisoning by later discussing the long half-life of uranium. I have seen numerous posters who will readily admit that ingesting or otherwise having uranium inside the body is toxic and poisoning. It's a heavy metal and like other heavy metals that's not good for the body but it's not radiation poisoning. He may have a valid point regarding heavy metal toxicity, not that he would have recognized that was what he was talking about, but it's lost in a bunch of lunatic nonsense.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Further evidence that the generation living are the biggest bunch of pussies that have ever been created. The following 'inventions' could never have been invented today. If they had been the layers and beaurcrats would have legistated them out of existence because they are just too dangerous, and could end up in the hands of either terrorists/ pedophiles /date rapists or white people.
1) Fire.
2) the internal combustion engine (thousands of EXPLOSIONS a minute)
3) cars
4) airplanes
7) guns. (politicians would be allowed to have them because they are responsible, but not the citizens)
7) bicycles (think of the children)
8) etc.
Basically civilization depends on the fact that we could get some things made b4 we became a bunch of pussies. We are all living on the backs of our grandfathers and grandmothers
Just think if nuclear power had been discovered in say 1900, it too could have been grandfathered in, and we would have cars that did not need fossil fuel. But noooo, you faggots get your panties in a bunch anytime someone mentions it.
That is exactly the problem. Lawn Darts went away because of hype over a very small number of freak accidents. The accidents got a lot of hype exactly because they were so unlikely. Meanwhile, other activities far more likely to cause death and injury continue because a related death or injury is no surprise and so is not really news.
This isn't even the first time a Gilbert Atomic Energy set has been in a museum. There's been one on display in the National Toy Train Museum on Pennsylvania (USA) for quite a while. You can (barely) see it off to the left at the 0:21 mark in this train video: http://nttmuseum.org/exhibits/... They don't make any extra-ordinary claims about its danger or cost. It's just an example of how people thought about things in a different time.
Carrying it in your pocket could become the latest birth control technique :-)
How is this rated Informative?
Studies have already been done with this and although ultimately it does work as a birth control method, though there is a high chance of testicular cancer where they have to chop off your balls. Most don't want to go through this extreme.
Vasectomy is far more practical...
Did you know that drinking water standards mandate reporting of uranium levels in tap water? Look up your local water source to see how much uranium you drink every day. Bottled water doesn't have to report uranium levels; see here, page 18: http://www.nestle-watersna.com...
I prefer tap water, because I like knowing exactly how much uranium I'm drinking.
there is a high chance of testicular cancer where they have to chop off your balls. Most don't want to go through this extreme.
And a lot of people do ;-) And it was probably rated informative because funny doesn't give you karma.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And of course the Gilbert chemistry sets with potassium cyanide. I remember when we were requested to bring it to the local fire department to dispose of. As an indication of how innocent I was then, I actually complied.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
You don't have to go far - just take the americium for a smoke detector and you've got a radiation source.
Or you can buy it from the US Atomic Energy Commission for $1500 per gram. Or you can order (really) small amounts online, exempt from USNRC and State licensing. They produce sufficient count-rate to check survey meters or conduct most nuclear science experiments in normal lab periods using standard Geiger Mueller counters or scintillation detectors, yet low enough so as not to present any radiation hazard.
Or you can order directly from the government. Now that I've done all those searches for "radioisotopes for sale" I'm probably on a few watch lists :-)
Yeah; and americium is not trivial.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
You can get some for free if you want to take a trip. Right outside of Moab, UT is an old Uranium Mine. There's a tailings pile nearby and you can pick up a piece of it. It's mostly combined in other rocks and has very little radioactivity. It's not the refined, ultra-pure stuff, 5 minutes of exposure will kill you type; that's what they did with all the other stuff they didn't think was crap.
NOTE: While it's not VERY radioactive is still IS radioactive. Don't plan a long camping trip there, or decide carry a piece of it around in your pocket. Ummm... I guess unless you like having tumors.
Probably how Saddam got his WMDs.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Carrying it in your pocket could become the latest birth control technique :-)
is that radioactivity in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I guess unless you like having tumors.
At first I didn't like the idea of having tumors, but it's growing on me.
The Fleetwood Mac album?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Once again, slashcode blows goats. Instead of Beta, how about we get the ability to edit posts?
You don't have to go far - just take the americium for a smoke detector and you've got a radiation source.
The most stable isotope of americium (243) has a half-life of 7370 years, so barely radioactive (not sure what they use in smoke detectors, but even 242 has a half-life of 141 years and thus isn't exactly hot.
Uranium 238, which is the vast majority of natural uranium (and basically all of "depleted" uranium) has a half-life of 4.47 billion years. No one rational is afraid of it's radioactivity - it's entirely scare-mongering. This is why no one cares about the uranium in granite countertops. Especially the scare-mongering over depleted uranium being somehow seen as more toxic than lead is entirely political theater ungrounded in any science.
Depleted Uranium, mainly U238, is primarily a source of alpha particles, which are not very penetrating and even skin will keep you relatively safe. The subatomic version of somebody chucking bricks at you, as opposed to shooting you with bullets (beta particles) or lasers (gamma rays).
However, once internalized by the body, it can directly irradiate lung tissue or your digestive epithelium, both of which are highly susceptible to carcinogenesis. Thus the dangers of depleted uranium weapons are embedded fragments to some degree, but more importantly inhalation of uranium dust, and/or uranium oxide smoke. In that this hasn't been a serious public health concern for too long, we don't have a really large background of studies, and the epidemiological studies on humans have a hard time calibrating how much exposure the person may have had; nobody's measuring the uranium content of the smoke on the battlefield. At this point the data is largely exploratory. http://www.ehjournal.net/conte...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Especially the scare-mongering over depleted uranium being somehow seen as more toxic than lead is entirely political theater ungrounded in any science.
Not all heavy metal poisoning is the same.
Why, you must be mad as a hatter.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
When it says "the most dangerous toy" I laughed thinking this product never disabled kids or sent them to the hospital like LAWN DARTS (Jarts) which was responsible for 1000's of injures and even disabilities... don't know if any one died but this toy was certainly much more dangerous that the kits described in the article.
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/7...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Ingested uranium was even used in the treatment of diabetes before the discovery of insulin.
Arsenic was used to treat syphilis. Doesn't mean it worked. It was more a case of:
"Does your finger hurt?"
"yes"
*smashes toe with sledgehammer*
"How about now?"
"It's fine, can I go now?"
We used to treat headaches with leaches. Doesn't mean there's any actual science behind the treatment.
Learn to love Alaska
Wrong, you've totally confused yourself ignorning half-lives. There is a delay before the betas come out after an alpha is released, three betas DON'T imediately spring out, instead the "principal daughter" thorium-234 has a half-lift of over three weeks before beta comes out!
http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium...
"Uranium and its decay products primarily emit alpha radiation, however, lower levels of both beta and gamma radiation are also emitted. "
Depleted Uranium, mainly U238, is primarily a source of alpha particles, which are not very penetrating and even skin will keep you relatively safe.
As pointed out elsewhere in comments, unless your U238 was very freshly and thoroughly purified, it will emit more betas than alphas, because the immediate decay products of U238 have a short half-life and emit betas.
There is a delay before the betas come out after an alpha is released
You seem to have no idea how half-life works, it is not a delay, but an average amount of time it takes for things to decay. After a single day of chemically purifying a 1 kg U238 sample, you would have accumulated over a trillion Th-234 atoms, which would have an activity on the order of a couple hundred kilobecquerel.
Working out the exact value is a simple differential equation, and you get the form A*(1-exp(-Bt)), and with the 24 day half life of the next step, you are up to 54% of maximum beta rate in just one month (and since it produces multiple betas in the U238 to U234 steps, you are now producing more betas than alphas).
The vast majority of uranium out there has not been chemically purified within the last couple months. And the link you provided is poorly written. While the majority of decay products of uranium are alpha emitters, it is a thin majority (13 of the 25 most common decay products). You can easily look up the energies yourself, and see that the betas emitted, especially from a natural uranium sample that has several multi-MeV decay steps.
The math and numbers for these are easy to get and simple to plug and chug, maybe you should try working them out instead of looking for vague, superficial descriptions written up somewhere.
With respect, I suggest you attempt to learn something about the topic before lecturing those of us who have worked in laboratories with such materials. I would not make up something about Ruby and assert it as a "fact" in some ego building effort to lecture others and suggest you do the same in areas outside of your awareness, knowlege and experience.
You've been tricked by revisionism - after it was pointed out just a few years ago how little radioactivity bananas actually have a new and far more correct "banana dose" value ended up in places like wikipedia. Look for it in print, or something that quotes the print, and you'll see, but you don't have to - just think about my next point.
How do those "setting off alarms" comments make any sense when a banana emits far less radiation from potassium than a single human being (as pointed out by another poster)? It only makes sense in the context of a vastly inflated figure.
I think we agree but we are both trying to be as clear as possible. /. posters seem to be in. Next thing some find out is that uranium is toxic, as a chemical. I was trying to guide the group mind in that direction.
I just posted the chemical toxicity of uranium just because the common thought (in the rest of the world) is that uranium is dangerous because it's radioactive. Once you get to know radioactivity a bit better most people start to think it's cute and cuddly because it isn't all that radioactive. This is the phase many
Multiple levels of insight.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Plutonium 238 - the only radiation power source safe enough to use inside the human body.
With an efficient enough power converter and a big enough battery Pu238 could just about make a nuclear car work.... The major problem (apart from regulation) is that the stuff is very expensive to make..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
FUN FACT : Nuclear protestors are statistically far more dangerous than nuclear power. By switching the world from nuclear towards coal they have indirectly killed 5 to 10 million people (since 1975). Whereas the total death toll from nuclear power is between about 10,000 and 60,000 people - ever.
Even nuclear weapons have only killed between about 300,000 and 500,000 people. Coal kills over a million every year..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Friend, you say that as if these people have a choice. They don't. It burns at 3000-6000 degrees and oxidizes into an insoluble ceramic aerosol. As an aerosol it is in their air and it is in their drinking water. How do you suggest they avoid ingesting them?
Yes, others have pointed that out. However you also said the scare-mongering over depleted uranium being somehow seen as more toxic than lead when its toxicity is still being evaluated in veterans and proving to be quite a serious issue for those exposed to it. So whilst your claim of no one cares about the uranium in granite countertops might be true I'm sure people would feel differently about it being in their air and water supply. Wouldn't you?
I'm sure this is one of the reasons the UN does not sanction their use.
Well I checked this and the science I read doesn't say anything about 'meaningfully radioactive', it says that the effects of U238 radioactivity as an emitter in the body are unclear and there hasn't been a large enough sample size of human beings exposed to U238 to understand the effects it has, on humans.
And to what isn't U238 'meaningfully' radioactive to? How do you know? Did you check the evidence? Because I did.
In the independent research with the most citations it seems that one of the cruelest deception played on the veterans is that uncovering *which* of the symptoms are caused by DU because they were also exposed to other heavy metals in pesticides and herbicides; in vaccines, including anthrax and botulinum toxin; in nerve agents: sari n, cyc losari n, tab un, som an, VX, multip le se ven, and no vac huks (nov ich oks); and in chemicals released from the Kamasiyah toxic chemical depot, which was destroyed by bombing and also subjected to petroleum products from the oil well fires.
So what has this got to do with u283 radiation? It turns out that because veterans were exposed to so many sources of heavy metal toxins it is preventing legal recognition of the harm caused by radiation, not that it isn't 'meaningfully radioactive'. A particularly salient and sobering paragraph from that paper:
Influential papers by physicists and several semi-official governmental organizations have attempted to eliminate DU from consideration by just such analyses (4â"8). These studies are not really independent, since each follows the guidelines, methodology, and risk estimates recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) (9).
As usual, I'll do the thinking here and join the dots to make it easier to understand the ramifications. As a final act of contemptuous betrayal of the soldiers what the ICRP was attempting to do was set up a research framework that led to the conclusion that the veterans suffering was all in their head. This is news to me too, even I didn't think the Nuclear Industry was that fucking despicable.
That is where your 'claim' that du is not 'meaningfully radioactive' comes from, so perhaps you should check the papers you read for ICRP influence.
How incredibly fortunate for us then, to have such a large sample size to study over the coming years in the populations of Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan and establish what the true radiological effect of depleted uranium is on a population.
That sounds like usual cop out for those suffering the effects of of social proof not being able to challenge their belief system with any evidence. I present the science, you say its is b
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
There is a delay before the betas come out after an alpha is released, three betas DON'T imediately spring out, instead the "principal daughter" thorium-234 has a half-lift of over three weeks before beta comes out
Radioactive decay is a Poisson process, and the time between decays is quite short a bit shorter than the half-life, the point where half of things have decayed. Even one second after U238 has been refined, you would have more than 10 million Th234 atoms, which is enough there wouldn't be statically significant chance of a "delay" and you would have several decays a second. The decay rate would exponentially approach a quasi-steady state. This ramps up pretty quickly, and some simple math will get you that after 15 minutes, a kilogram of U238 will contain enough Th234 beta decays to exceed the generic, non-alpha license exempt source quantity of 0.1 uCi (there are a lot of license exempt, specific uses for DU though that get around that limit, but only if you use it for a specifically listed purposes, or a select list of grandfathered items made with less than few percent or less U, or have natural ore below a certain concentration). After a couple months, the quasi-stead state is reached, and the short half-life beta decays are happening as fast as the alpha decays.
My old vinyl stereo record days had a clip on radioactive attachment. It was placed ahead of the stylus and the theory was that it's radiation would stop the formation of static electricity, that was prevalent with long play records. We wanted to listen to our records without the snap, crackle and pop.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I would just slowly pour water onto the disk until there was a nice coating everywhere, then play it. At 33-1/3 rpm, the water stayed in place. Made for pop-free transfers from disk to tape.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
What's more fun is to measure the radioactivity from certain types of quarried stone countertops...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/garden/24granite.html?_r=0
You seem to have no idea how reality works; instead of misconceptions you make up from you pure "book learning", in reality a lump of uranium is primarily an alpha emitter. Look it up and educate yourself. People who have worked at national labs and nuke plants, ie. me, know this. Meanwhile, you prattle on making assumptions based on half-understood freshman classes.
you make up from you pure "book learning",
I've used uranium for calibration of gamma ray spectrometers, and for testing radiation counters that are not alpha sensitive (really common for cheep GM counters, and uranium samples are a lot easier to get for demonstrations than other calibration sources, but also for beta scintillators that are not alpha sensitive). But yeah, keep telling yourself it is just someone book learning, and they can fix book learning by just "look it up." If it was just a matter of looking it up, you could have done the math yourself instead of repeatedly showing ignorance without any hint of change.
People who have worked at national labs and nuke plants...assumptions based on half-understood freshman classes.
I guess PPPL and ONL don't count. And at you're also wrong about it being based on a freshman class, as this would be more based on the junior level nuclear lab course I've taught before. But I guess lab courses involve no hands on experience with actual equipment, and it is just "pure book learning" and no connection to how reality works...
Assumptions? You need only three things to make the calculation made above (now by multiple people):
U238 decays in with half-life of ~4.5 billion years
It decays into Th234 with a half-life of ~24 day
Radioactive decay is proportional to number of atoms N'(t)=K*N(t)
The only assumption then is you're not right in the middle of a purification process that would remove the thorium, which is true for a brick of uranium. Everything else is basic math, no other assumptions needed. Even you call it freshman level, which is and makes me wonder why you would challenge that. Do you disagree with the half-life of either isotope? Do you not understand the math in the third point, the basics of radioactive decay? If not, there is no other thing in the way of the Th234 decays matching the U238 decay rate after a couple months.
You complain about not understanding reality, yet have you never taken a non-alpha sensitive Geiger counter to a piece of uranium? Even a piece of Fiestaware will peg the meter on lower ranges, along with a variety of other uranium sources, included DU, available for showing someone how a Geiger counter works.
You go on to make a reference that you work with such things in a professional capacity. Then have you not seen discussion of the problems with uncompensated radiation detectors, which quite frequently contrast Cs137 to uranium response of detectors like a Geiger counter, and why you get the wrong counts from uranium due to energy dependence of the detector? This is pretty common in professional level introductions to radiation measurements, and if you have not come across that, not only are you the one who is stuck in book learning instead of real world use of such equipment, you're potentially dangerous misunderstanding of how to use such equipment.
Or for other real world learning, consider any intro nuclear lab course... which will have you confirm that half-life works exactly as stated in the third point above, usually with either neutron activation or an "isotope generator" that chemically separates a fresh isotope for students to use in lab work (even at the high school level). Hell, even the whole concept of faster decaying products forming a quasi-equilibrium with the parent decay rate is used to measure radon decay, because the decay products will stick to a collection filter while the radon does not. Not only is that a part of many lab courses, it is something people can do at home for under $10 by building a home made ionization chamber.
For someone complaining others have only book learning, you're showing more lack of real world learn than any of the other commenters in this thread. You make it sound like you've never actually used a detector on uranium, which would take ~10 seconds to realize there is a lot more than alphas coming off of it, or you just fundamentally do not understand multiple principles behind doing so. That makes it even sadder you try to claim you're coming from a position of authority at a lab. Hopefully you're not at least a radiation safety officer, since I know first hand that requires a decent understanding of detection equipment calibration and limitations...
FUN FACT: Chernobyl released ~5000000000 recurrent fatal cancer doses in the form of pu239 radio isotope alone.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Oh so that's why everyone in Europe and half of Asia are dead. Like when the Hiroshima bomb cracked the Earth and killed everyone on the planet....
While the 100+ million killed by coal over the last 100 years are real.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Ingested uranium was even used in the treatment of diabetes before the discovery of insulin.
Arsenic was used to treat syphilis. Doesn't mean it worked. ...
We used to treat headaches with leaches. Doesn't mean there's any actual science behind the treatment.
The arsenic was somewhat effective, in the days when they had nothing better.
They now treat those smashed toes with leaches. And it can save them from amputation.
Don't get so sure of yourself, it's dangerous... 8-)
FUN FACT: Under the 2005 energy act nuclear protesters and local residents cannot affect or interfere with the deployment of a nuclear reactor BY LAW. Nuclear power isn't being deployed because it's a risky investment that no one wants to put money into.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
That's about the time they discover there is a difference between radiation and radio isotopes, that one is an emission and the later is an emitter. After that they find out that particular radio isotopes appear to be particular micro-nutrients to metabolisms and bio-accumulate in the foodchain. After that they discover there is multiple pathways for radio-isotopes to get into the body via inhalation/food/water. Then they discover that once the radio isotope is in the human body the energetic alpha/beta/gamma emissions take about six years to gestate cancer in the body.
Hopefully more /.ers will realize this and start to understand what the issues are.
Indeed. Though the science I've been reading says that the effects of radiation emitted from DU are unclear on humans. I'll refer you to my earlier post for my summary of the science. Apologies for some of the language dealing with the troll.
DU has an unusual property where it has spontaneous fission and its energetic emissions jump from 4 to 240Mev (I think its the alpha emissions) whilst it decays. However that is not the point I was trying to make.
The point I am trying to make is not the source of radiation but a source of radio isotopes. That a nuclear bomb lets its energy out all at once and leaves much less than the original mass (~50Kg) as fall-out in the form of radio-isotopes.
In comparison with DU of which there is almost 2 tons spread around the country as a ceramic aerosol.
Deep down Americans are also just people. I don't believe that American citizens would allow this behavior to continue if they understood the consequences would attach them to such shame.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Video or it didn't happen.
Actually, since I'm sharing an office this month with the safety officer and a lifting-slinging-cranes instructor, I've seen more than enough "this is why you wear a hard hat and you still don't get anywhere near (30degree fall angle) of a suspended load" videos this week. the polite ones illustrate using a watermelon in place of a human head. The ones from surveillance cameras are kill porn.
A hard hat is good to around 1kg mass falling through 1m. Anything much more the hat may reduce injury, but there's still a good chance of serious injury or death.
A few days ago, someone had put a half-kilo water bottle on a ledge on a basket load for tubulars. When it was being boomed out over to the cargo boat, it fell from about 20m height - equivalent to about 10kilos through 1m or 1kilo through 10m. Well into serious injury territory.
Sorry, but I work with these dudes and Dropped Objects are a day-to-day conversation , meeting and email subject here.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Hundreds, I'd live with. Thousands? Citation required, I think.
Yes, I did grow up in a house with lead piping. Which is why, to this day, I run the tap for a good 30 seconds before taking water to drink or cook with. There were coping strategies that evolved in the last few centuries when people did understand "lead" as an element (and so "lead poisoning" as a concept distinct from "arsenic poisoning" and "belladonna poisoning") which the Romans didn't seem to have.
I'm trying to remember when the hypothesis that lead poisoning is what did in the Romans originated. I think it's relatively recent - Gibbon in his "Decline & Fall" blamed the de-balling effect of Christianity for the decline and fall, and he was one of the first to try to come up with an overarching explanation. That would put the "lead poisoning" theory at being at most a couple of centuries old, as a disagreement with Gibbon.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I'd look at that as a geologist and think - there's a good chance that the limestones would help to concentrate the seepage of radon from the basement into particular areas.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
From Kaos' figures (which I am taking as unadulterated bullshit) he's talking about killing pretty much everyone outside of Africa and South America.
The boy has the "thousand yard stare" : back away from him, while feeling around for useful tools like a clue-by-four. His original case may have had some merit, but by his deranged mumblings, he's tainted it by association.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
His figures are accurate enough to make him a Greenpeace spokesman.. :)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Then again, they're something approaching scientists of one form or another. They have more attachment to truth than to politics.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"