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Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
mattrg2 wrote ...
usaman65 wrote ...
alright, sure, as soon as I get your package back ill send you some trinitite to have tested along with the pitchblende. by the way, is that your hottest thing in your collection now?
how hot was the aluminum from the beta radiation? I have wrapped some bagged samples in al foil here and found that the aluminum is strongly adioactive after this....
kev
Radiation doesnt make things radioactive. You probably have bits of ore (dust maybe, or radon) present on the foil ( in other words, your foil is contaminated with ore)... Matt
In fact, bombardment of aluminium-27 with alpha particles produces phosphorous-30, a radioisotope with a half-life of two weeks. This was the first instance of artificial radioactivity ever discovered, in, I think, 1934.
Pitchblende/uraninite contains both radium and polonium, - strong alpha-emitters both - so it is perfectly possible that aluminium foil used to wrap rich ore samples would continue to radiate from the phosphorous-30 that had been produced in it.
But the idea that beta emissions could do this is a mistake.
Registered Member #902
Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: Pacific Northwest USA
Posts: 1042
the thing about the gas that because it is heavier than air, unless the container is either always upright, or completely air tight, then the gas moves away (due to gravity)... and the polonium was just to clarify what could be there if it was not ore that contaminated the aluminum (and the samples he and I were referring to were Pitchblende Ore...)
as for the radioactivity of U-238 metal, I know it is lower... but you can't say that it is only the U-235 or other small amounts of radioactive elements in ore that make it hotter, as those occur in much smaller amounts than U-238 (ever seen the percentages of how much U-238 there is to U-235?), if they were very significant, than it would be much more regulated than it currently is as as of now you'd need a lot of ore to get a significant amount of U-235...
and as for the referring to U-238 as "poop"... that is Uranium Hexaflouride IIRC... this is ACS/Reagent Grade... but it is still much less hot than ore or other elements, but I still think your comparing it with trinitite in your post regarding what someone thinks is hot is a little off... Trinitite might as well be considered only an Iota above background radiation... and Uranium is still attractive, in some ways, by it's actual radioactivity in that it is cheap, exempt in small amounts, and emits Alpha, Beta, and Gamma... and it is very dense
so do understand that I know U-238 is not too active compared to ores, but it is much more active than Trinitite (which is just wanted for it's historical value)... but the reason for using a sample is varied from situation to situation, and if you took the radioactive isotopes out of the ore, and compressed them into a solid metal piece... how active do you think it would be? the gamma from Uranium is not that strong, relatively speaking, and since it is much denser than lead, much gamma is blocked except that which comes from near the surface...
Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
[quote] [quote] [quote] And U238 is less active than the ore because the ore STILL has the U-235 still in it [/quote1235613809]
No, the ore is much the most active because it contains radium, polonium, numerous actinides, and also exhales radon gas. Radium, and polonium you'll remember, were both first extracted from pitchblende by Marie Curie, who took them for the active principal of the ore. Radium accounts for the greater part of the activity of pitchblende/uraninite.
U-235 has a half-life of 7.13×10-8 years, compared with 4.51×10-9 years for U-238, and so is scarcely more radioactive in a way that the amateur could easily detect and measure even with good instruments and methods.
Registered Member #99
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:10PM
Location: florida, usa
Posts: 637
Ok, first of all, there is no way in hell that there is enough alpha present to activate the Aluminum foil. Thats rediculous. I have some of the HOTTEST stuff you can get, and IT doesnt do that. Im talking 100mR/Hr of gamma only stuff (One single chunk of 100% uraninite 3lbs). You ought to see what the alphas will do to zinc phosphour! So wrapping it up in Al. foil does nothing at all...Infact, none of my rocks do that and I have some amazing stuff. (180gram nugget of pure curite or kasolite, 200gram piece of Cuprosklodowskite as well as autunites and torbernites). All of these have different style geometry. NONE do this. Neither does Am-241. In other words, thats deffinately not happening with trinitite.
Isnt Polonium a primary alpha emitter? If so, you wouldnt have a clue if it was in there as the alphas would be blocked by the mass it was in. So thats also out of the question.
Radium deffinately contributes to the ore's radioactivity. But so does U-235. U-235 is hot as hell despite it making up about 1% of the total uranium.
The reason that U-238 is weak is NOT because it is blocking its massive gamma radiation that must be present, it is because its radium and U-235 is gone. End of story. The whole point of processing uranium is to REMOVE all the good stuff. I dont know what you think you have, but its depleted uranium. No way around that. Its mostly U-238 which isnt all that active. (Look at its half life).
"ACS/Reagent Grade" How do you figure? Where did you get such a thing? Im guessing ebay...Or United Nuclear which in the case are both just depleted uranium.
Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
Perhaps trinitite which was first collected in the late 1940s by one person, and then re-collected by someone completely different in the 1970s has mysterious alchemical properties, like red mercury, or do I mean red herrings? Perhaps, like a mischievous quantum, it is able to appear in one place, and then re-appear somewhere else in time without explanation.
And with that I shall gracefully withdraw from the discussion, gentlemen, as I am not a nuclear physicist, just an old codger with curiousity and a garden shed.
Registered Member #1364
Joined: Thu Feb 28 2008, 09:09PM
Location:
Posts: 55
I wrapped very hot pitchblende uranium ore samples in cheap aluminum foil. They were bagged, so I dought any alpha could penitrate it. And no, there was no radioactive dust that the aluminum would have gained activity from. I dont know the alloy of the aluminum, but it did become slightly radioactive as in around 1000 CPM. I think it might be due to electron capture?? not sure if that is even relevant. but the pieces are mostly rich in beta radiation.
Registered Member #99
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:10PM
Location: florida, usa
Posts: 637
usaman65 wrote ...
I wrapped very hot pitchblende uranium ore samples in cheap aluminum foil. They were bagged, so I dought any alpha could penitrate it. And no, there was no radioactive dust that the aluminum would have gained activity from. I dont know the alloy of the aluminum, but it did become slightly radioactive as in around 1000 CPM. I think it might be due to electron capture?? not sure if that is even relevant. but the pieces are mostly rich in beta radiation.
Uhuh, yea. Beta radiation you say? 1000CPM, just slightly radioactive.
Registered Member #902
Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: Pacific Northwest USA
Posts: 1042
mattrg2 wrote ...
Ok, first of all, there is no way in hell that there is enough alpha present to activate the Aluminum foil. Thats rediculous. I have some of the HOTTEST stuff you can get, and IT doesnt do that. Im talking 100mR/Hr of gamma only stuff (One single chunk of 100% uraninite 3lbs). You ought to see what the alphas will do to zinc phosphour! So wrapping it up in Al. foil does nothing at all...Infact, none of my rocks do that and I have some amazing stuff. (180gram nugget of pure curite or kasolite, 200gram piece of Cuprosklodowskite as well as autunites and torbernites). All of these have different style geometry. NONE do this. Neither does Am-241. In other words, thats deffinately not happening with trinitite.
Isnt Polonium a primary alpha emitter? If so, you wouldnt have a clue if it was in there as the alphas would be blocked by the mass it was in. So thats also out of the question.
Radium deffinately contributes to the ore's radioactivity. But so does U-235. U-235 is hot as hell despite it making up about 1% of the total uranium.
The reason that U-238 is weak is NOT because it is blocking its massive gamma radiation that must be present, it is because its radium and U-235 is gone. End of story. The whole point of processing uranium is to REMOVE all the good stuff. I dont know what you think you have, but its depleted uranium. No way around that. Its mostly U-238 which isnt all that active. (Look at its half life).
"ACS/Reagent Grade" How do you figure? Where did you get such a thing? Im guessing ebay...Or United Nuclear which in the case are both just depleted uranium.
you seriously misunderstand what I am saying... I agree, activating Al with anything amateurs, and most of the stuff professionals can get, is near impossible... especially with Trinitite (which I never said, though someone else might have) as it's radiation is barely above background... what I was referring to (and what seems to be misunderstood) is if there is an Alpha emitter contaminating the Al, then there is a good chance there are neutrons being produced...
SECOND point: I never said the U-238, aka Depleted Uranium, was hot compared with U-235... I was saying that it is still significantly radioactive. My statement that you may have misread is that if you were to compress the metals contained in that ore into the density of Uranium, most of the radiation exposure you would measure would be unmeasurable... AS for the ACS/Reagent grade comment, I was referring to the fact that what I have is chemically pure U-238, and that is what I need!
Registered Member #96
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062
sounds like dust contamination. FWIW Cs-137 will do this and its pretty nasty stuff. You really need to find out whats going on here as there may be significant safety issues if someone has ground up something they shouldn't and "salted" the rocks with it.
iirc Trinitite does contain Cs-137 but its securely bound up in the rock matrix.
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