Welcome to Laser Pointer Forums - discuss green laser pointers, blue laser pointers, and all types of lasers

Buy Site Supporter Role (remove some ads) | LPF Donations

Links below open in new window

FrozenGate by Avery

Elements and metals group buy?

Sigurthr said:
Yeah, unfortunately it is illegal to purify thorium from consumer products into a concentrated form. Thank the "Radioactive Boyscout" for that. So, either buy it as metal or as compound, but don't change one in to the other. Direct from the mouth of the NRC. They figure small elemental samples are OK, but if you can refine/purify material then you have the means to make a breeder reactor and then there is also the tailings (illegal) and contamination risk.
Click to expand...

Didn't know this, thanks for the heads up. That kid was WAY over his head. I would personally never plan on doing anything like that but laws are laws, I guess.
 





And I thought I was strange because I wanted to collect elements!

I'm up for Gallium, Indium, depleted Uranium (metallic), Thorium (metallic), Bismuth, Titanium, and interested in a few others.

I have Bismuth crystals & Magnesium ribbon already.

Would love to make low melting point alloys like Field's metal (indium, bismuth, tin) & Wood's Metal (bismuth, lead, tin, cadmium).

If I thought customs would let me get away with it I'd ask for , Phosphorus, Sodium, Potassium, Rubidium, Caesium, radium, Actinium!
 
Nothing wrong with collecting elements, it's a good hobby. Also really satisfying to use those elements to do projects with. I can definitely get all materials to make Field's metal and Wood's metal, but I won't be selling uranium or thorium metal...I don't even know where I could buy it in that form.

By the way, you're going to have a hard time getting actinium...there is only an ounce on the entire earth at any point in time!
 
I agree I have always wanted a collection of all the elements and a display for them grouping them like the table of elements, I am waiting for one of you folks to make a laser diode out of a vacuum tube and some indium or something odd.:thinking:
 
I'm interested in some gallium. I bought some from you last time and made a video:
 
Sigurthr said:
Yeah, unfortunately it is illegal to purify thorium from consumer products into a concentrated form. Thank the "Radioactive Boyscout" for that. So, either buy it as metal or as compound, but don't change one in to the other. Direct from the mouth of the NRC. They figure small elemental samples are OK, but if you can refine/purify material then you have the means to make a breeder reactor and then there is also the tailings (illegal) and contamination risk.
Click to expand...

Holy crap :wtf: Never heard this story, thanks for posting that tid bit..

 
@Jlse No problem, aye it is a simple design with specs open to the general public for years. It is based off what is called an "Urchin" which is a neutron flux generator consisting of an alpha source and an element with a low-Z number (like Lithium, Beryllium, and Aluminium). The Alpha particles liberate a neutron in the target element by transmuting the element to something else, the liberated neutron is then directed at a transmutation target, such as Throium. This turns Thorium232 in to Uranium-233 which is highly fissile. There is a lot of radiation released when Th233 turns in to U233, and this is how the boyscout got caught.... he didn't use any shielding. Specifically Th233 decaus via -b to Pa233 w/ a half life of ~30min. Pa233 decays to U233 via -b with a roughly 1mo halflife. So as time went on more and more beta radiation was released by the decaying Th233 chain. He never ended up with much U233 as it takes roughly 5 half lives to reduce a quantitiy to 3% of starting amount. So you'd be looking at 5mo for the first bit of produced Th233 to get to U233. There was not a lot of Th233 made at all, but David was a walking contamination zone. His car, shed, house, everything was badly contaminated because he used no containment methods and most of his nuclides were in powder form.

Thusly you can "breed" reactor/weapons grade U233 from only three common elements: Thorium, Beryllium (or Li or Al), and Radium (or Americium). The RaBe variant is the second most powerful urchin setup; superceded only by PuBe. The one the boyscout used: AmAl is the absolute weakest as Aluminium has a poor capture cross-section for neutrons.
 
So far, here's a list of what people have expressed interest in:

Gallium
Indium
Mercury
Magnesium
Potassium
Cesium
Rubidium
Bismuth
Copper (powder)
Iron (powder)
Aluminum (powder)
Cadmium
Titanium

I won't be selling thorium, uranium, lithium, or sodium as the company I am buying from doesn't have them for sale.

I will send in a price quote request on Wednesday. If there is anything else you are interested in, post here and I'll add it to the list.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top