radioactive material and laser ionization threshold

Seoul_lasers said:

What could be possibly more more enjoyable than having a highly toxic, highly reactive, Radioactive compound to melt your face off with. :angel:

Click to expand...

Life.

HydroSean said:

Life.

Click to expand...

Sorry man, that last comment made me .... wait for it... any second.... almost there ....






Kidding... :na:

Yeah i knew you were being sarcastic, i was just being very forthcoming. Dangerous chemicals is actually what got me interested in getting a bachelors in chemistry, but there is a point at which you have to draw the line

HydroSean said:

Yeah i knew you were being sarcastic, i was just being very forthcoming. Dangerous chemicals is actually what got me interested in getting a bachelors in chemistry, but there is a point at which you have to draw the line

Click to expand...

sure.. Mine ended in middle school ~23/24years ago when I did a Thionyl Chloride synthesis (quite successful) and a few other synths that got some unwanted attention
including a trip to see the Police Liaison Officer. :shhh:



Anyways. I still do chemistry from time to time.

Now I focus mostly on electronics, high power rocketry and Radioisotopes.

Seoul_lasers said:

sure.. Mine ended in middle school ~23/24years ago when I did a Thionyl Chloride synthesis (quite successful) and a few other synths that got some unwanted attention
including a trip to see the Police Liaison Officer. :shhh:



Anyways. I still do chemistry from time to time.

Now I focus mostly on electronics, high power rocketry and Radioisotopes.

Click to expand...

Yeah most of the stuff that interests me is unobtainable like liquid fluoride thorium reactor agents. I put in a request to get a permit but haven't heard back and its been like 3 months now.

HydroSean said:

Yeah most of the stuff that interests me is unobtainable like liquid fluoride thorium reactor agents. I put in a request to get a permit but haven't heard back and its been like 3 months now.

Click to expand...

You'd be surprised how obtainable radioisotopes are. Many Uranium compounds are classed under NORM (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material) legislation and are free to purchase without a license in the US and Canada. Thorium is the same way too. Ebay has from time to time regent grade Th(NO3)4 for sale.

Am241 can be found in the pyrotronics smoke detectors 80uCi total active materials ea.. VERY hazardous.

Cs137 up to 5-10uCi in various spark and radiotubes
Ra226 in Radium watches, sparkgap transmitters ..etc
Sr90 on IT-65 from Soviet Union (1980s) ~20uCi source.

This thread has made me wonder: would it be possible to surround a crystal laser rod with some radioactive material as a pump energy source to produce a CW or Q-switched laser?

WizardG said:

This thread has made me wonder: would it be possible to surround a crystal laser rod with some radioactive material as a pump energy source to produce a CW or Q-switched laser?

Click to expand...

Nope.. not at all. We actually answered this in another thread.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f54/best-wavelenght-ionize-air-99614.html
You need a very specific wavelengths to pump laser rods. Not all have the same absorption frequency but there exists no material that would absorb Gamma photons.

Certainly not a crystal rod, but in theory perhaps a gas laser?

It would require ridiculous amounts of radioactive material to pull off, but in theory ionizing radion would well, ionize, gas into a plasma that could in theory lase. Sort of a beta-pumped He-Ne laser or something similar to it. Practially the radiation required would probably so intense it would destory the machine before it fires up, but otherwise i see no reason why it's totally impossible.


As for things chemist will or will not mess with: this depends greatly. Something generally considered quite dangerous like concentrated sulfuric acid is a common lab chemical. It's dangerous if you get large amount of it on your skin etc, but very controllable.

Another example: acetone peroxide. This is a very sensitive explosive substance that many chemist will readily make on purpose (for demonstrations) in small quantities. You let it dry on filter paper. Make a small pile, put a flame to it a 'poof' it goes (it might also do this without the flame, but who cares, it's not confined to cause someting to shatter).

However, it is also produced as a side product in some reactions, and most chemists are quite careful to prevent that: Once you obtain the product with acetone peroxide as an impurity and put it in a glass bottle for storage, results are not favourable if that goes bang at all.

Safety is often in containment: Having a tank of HF vent is probably about as deadly as falling into a pool of sulfuric acid, but the latter just does never happen by accident. Also, bystanders will not be (physically) harmed.

Seoul_lasers said:

Nope.. not at all. We actually answered this in another thread.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f54/best-wavelenght-ionize-air-99614.html
You need a very specific wavelengths to pump laser rods. Not all have the same absorption frequency but there exists no material that would absorb Gamma photons.

Click to expand...

OK, we can't pump a laser rod with gamma photons. What about beta particles (electrons)? I can imagine, for example, an Nd-YAG rod coated with a phosphor that radiates at 808 nm when excited by electron impact from a strong beta source (SR90?). The rod would absorb the 808nm light and lase at 1064. I can't imagine this being very efficient--the whole thing would probably melt promptly without forced water cooling. And in no way would this ever be practical! I just wonder if it's possible, and if anything like this has ever been tried.

Benm said:

Another example: acetone peroxide. This is a very sensitive explosive substance that many chemist will readily make on purpose (for demonstrations) in small quantities. You let it dry on filter paper. Make a small pile, put a flame to it a 'poof' it goes (it might also do this without the flame, but who cares, it's not confined to cause someting to shatter).

However, it is also produced as a side product in some reactions, and most chemists are quite careful to prevent that: Once you obtain the product with acetone peroxide as an impurity and put it in a glass bottle for storage, results are not favourable if that goes bang at all.

Click to expand...

Nitrogen Triiodide is a good example of a very sensitive explosive and is great for classroom demonstrations. So much as touching it with a feather will cause it to rapidly decompose in a small "explosion". That also means it can't be produced, transported or stored in large quantities.

Edit: seeing as we're talking about pumping lasers with radioactive sources, take a read of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pumped_laser

Saw an article about that exact laser.

Unfortunately as the wiki article suggested much of the findings were falsified to get more defense funding.
I'm not sure how well it would have worked anyways. Using a small neutron device to energize a mixture of Ar and He sound like an interesting endeavor.


Another proposition of the project was the use of Hydrogen, Fluorine and Oxygen to create a chemical IR laser. This is very similar to the COIL project that makes up the US Army airborne chemical laser (Helium, Iodine, Oxygen).

Seoul_lasers said:

Saw an article about that exact laser.

Unfortunately as the wiki article suggested much of the findings were falsified to get more defense funding.
I'm not sure how well it would have worked anyways. Using a small neutron device to energize a mixture of Ar and He sound like an interesting endeavor.


Another proposition of the project was the use of Hydrogen, Fluorine and Oxygen to create a chemical IR laser. This is very similar to the COIL project that makes up the US Army airborne chemical laser (Helium, Iodine, Oxygen).

Click to expand...

Sort of like a gas dynamic laser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_dynamic_laser

diachi said:

Sort of like a gas dynamic laser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_dynamic_laser

Click to expand...

Indeed the COIL is an example of such a laser.

The COIL is an example of a laser pumped by chemical enegery, and it works, despite having several practical problems.

This is not the only type of chemically pumped laser though, some options are available there using nascent excited states of molecules.

These are not -nuclearly- pumped lasers however, and the difference in potential power is about 1000 times for equal amounts of fuel.

This is all assuming battlefield weapons need to be large and powerful though, which might no longer be the case. A lot of military effort is spent on doing far less destructive work like clearing mine fields. There could be applications there for lasers setting off unwanted mines using lasers, though just landing cheap drones right on top of them might be more economical.

Benm said:

The COIL is an example of a laser pumped by chemical enegery, and it works, despite having several practical problems.

This is not the only type of chemically pumped laser though, some options are available there using nascent excited states of molecules.

These are not -nuclearly- pumped lasers however, and the difference in potential power is about 1000 times for equal amounts of fuel.

This is all assuming battlefield weapons need to be large and powerful though, which might no longer be the case. A lot of military effort is spent on doing far less destructive work like clearing mine fields. There could be applications there for lasers setting off unwanted mines using lasers, though just landing cheap drones right on top of them might be more economical.

Click to expand...

The US has such a laser for doing exactly this. That one runs using fiber coupled laser diodes. ~2KW worth to be precise.
It is truck mountable or can be setup on a tripod. One person can operate the laser via a computer.