Can they keep a lid on this ? ( Radioactives Selling )

a reply to: intrptr

Half life of elements is immaterial when it comes to ingesting them.

If I follow your logic, ingestion of potassium-40 (1.251×10^9 years) shall be very dangerous.

originally posted by: PeterMcFly
a reply to: intrptr

Half life of elements is immaterial when it comes to ingesting them.

If I follow your logic, ingestion of potassium-40 (1.251×10^9 years) shall be very dangerous.

Hello McFly,

the banana gambit isn't going to fly.

When a person eats an average 150 gram banana, they absorb about .1 micro-Sieverts of radiation. A person would have to eat 27 bananas a day for 100 years to up their cancer risk by 1 percent.

Don't read this

a reply to: intrptr

If I still follow your logic:

For 100g of banana

Potassium content 358mg

K-40 ratio = 0.012% = 0.00012

100g of banana contain 358mg * 0.00012 = 42.96ug of K-40

Then the same dose of radium (forgive me to not convert into atomic moles, too lazy) would be as safe.

At the time of the Manhattan Project in 1944, the "tolerance dose" for workers was set at 0.1 microgram of ingested radium.

Sorry but I think that half-life is very important as it relate to the activity in becquerel.

a reply to: PeterMcFly

Sorry but I think that half-life is very important as it relate to the activity in becquerel.

A 'becquerel' is a measure of decay events detectable by instrument. This becomes less relevant for instance when dealing with alpha emitters internal to the body.

Let me give you a for instance. Try to absorb as much of this material as possible.

a reply to: intrptr

A 'becquerel' is a measure of decay events detectable by instrument.

I think it is you who need some revision of the theory. A Bq is the number of decay per second, all of them not just those absorbed by your detection gear.

And Sv measure health effect already corrected by weighting factors, like alpha is 20x and gamma is 1x.

a reply to: PeterMcFly

I think it is you who need some revision of the theory.

A particle of alpha emitting radioactive contamination inside you is hardly "theoretical".


Heres a 24 hour radio graph of PU in the lung tissue an ape…

a reply to: intrptr

Would you please stop constantly deflecting the arguments given and comment of the provided info.

originally posted by: PeterMcFly
a reply to: intrptr

Would you please stop constantly deflecting the arguments given and comment of the provided info.

Yah okay, now switch to personal attack. The thread topic is 'sales of radioactive elements' to other than authorized agencies to make bombs (dirty or otherwise) to inflict harm on people.

My actual information about the harm of radioactive contamination internal to the body and in the environment is very on topic. You and others are deflecting with the usual 'same as background', 'natural' and 'banana gambits'.

How about you try staying on topic.

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: PeterMcFly
a reply to: intrptr

Would you please stop constantly deflecting the arguments given and comment of the provided info.

Yah okay, now switch to personal attack. The thread topic is 'sales of radioactive elements' to other than authorized agencies to make bombs (dirty or otherwise) to inflict harm on people.

My actual information about the harm of radioactive contamination internal to the body and in the environment is very on topic. You and others are deflecting with the usual 'same as background', 'natural' and 'banana gambits'.

How about you try staying on topic. Also, i cant see ANY personal attack anywhere in his post

You have posted bullsh*t images that have nothing to do with radiation induced birth defects to try to bolster your argument. How about YOU stay on topic and stop posting lies.

a reply to: 3danimator2014

Very good. Google image searches are full of misleading info, just like you. You have to sort through the garbage.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: 3danimator2014

Very good. Google image searches are full of misleading info, just like you. You have to sort through the garbage.

I see...so it's ok for YOU to post rubbish as it's our job to sort through the crap?

Did I get that right

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: Bedlam

Sure it is. The article is describing refined but not enriched uranium.

"Refined" isn't "Natural", nice try.

It's not enriched, so it's a perfect try, and a score. Considering that if it were talking about ore it would be even LESS concentrated, and therefore go from piddly to infinitesimal on the radioactivity scale.

Source Internal or external to the human body?

Unless you're talking alphas, it really doesn't matter.

Half life of elements is immaterial when it comes to ingesting them.

It's always material. If it has an infinite half-life, it's not radioactive at all. Billions of years is pretty close.

originally posted by: intrptr

the banana gambit isn't going to fly.

Sure it does. Just because it sort of stomps your argument doesn't mean it's incorrect.

Is the radiation of K-40 inside you, yes. Therefore, by your argument, it is EEEEVIL and must immediately cause grave damage. It's a beta emitter, too.

When a person eats an average 150 gram banana, they absorb about .1 micro-Sieverts of radiation. A person would have to eat 27 bananas a day for 100 years to up their cancer risk by 1 percent.

And how many microSieverts of radiation will you receive from the uranium in the OP? The halflives are comparable.

originally posted by: intrptr
A 'becquerel' is a measure of decay events detectable by instrument per second.

Fixed that for you. Becquerels don't go away if you turn off the meter. It's a measure of activity. There aren't secret hidden events that only occur in the body.

This becomes less relevant for instance when dealing with alpha emitters internal to the body.

The emission is the same inside your body or out...the becquerels won't vary.

originally posted by: intrptr
A particle of alpha emitting radioactive contamination inside you is hardly "theoretical".

Try not to conflate the physics term 'theory' with the stoner use of the word which means 'wild fanciful speculation'. It doesn't become you to be disingenuous. Unless, of course, you just don't know the difference.

Heres a 24 hour radio graph of PU in the lung tissue an ape…

What does one look like in, say, muscle tissue? Pu is chemically toxic, and causes dramatic fibrosis of lung tissue. Not because of radioactivity. But because it's poisonous. Pu in lung tissue always looks awful, because it is. If I exposed you to a few hundred micrograms of aerosolized Pu, you'd be dead in a couple of days from the chemotoxic effects on your lungs. The radiation you won't have time to worry about. And hey, plutonium's not the topic of the thread, so you're sort of drifting again. If we're just going to make up wildly divergent crap here, it would be easy for the average very well informed terrorist to get a wad of highly active easily dispersed material in any large port city. And some inland ones. But the topic's not 'how do you make a dirty bomb out of crap lying about'.

The real punchline of the OP is that you can't make a good "dirty bomb" out of uranium, because it's not very radioactive. If you COULD vaporize it and distribute it over a large area, then the people exposed to it will die of chemical poisoning by uranium. It's not that easy to do, fortunately, and just wrapping some semtex around it won't get the job done very efficiently. It also doesn't STAY vaporized, and precipitates out as dust. Pu, on the other hand, will remain a nice suspended aerosol for quite some time. It's not unusual for exercises to end up with the terrorist team just burning their plutonium in the middle of a big city rather than trying to make a bomb. It depends on the weather you're dealt. Got a big temperature inversion and no rain, the go-to end of the game is to burn the stuff on a high building.

And, no, your average terrorist can't take the material and convert it to plutonium. So Pu isn't relevant, at all, to the thread.

a reply to: Bedlam

I mean like the teams tasked with investigating and recovering this stuff. Having to "officially not exist" and yet be beyond any government or military clearance/authority has got be a weird reality to live in.

a reply to: Bedlam

First it wasn't dangerous because it wasn't "refined" now, its not "enriched".

Unless you're talking alphas, it really doesn't matter.

Pffft…

It's always material. If it has an infinite half-life, it's not radioactive at all.

Then its considered stable, not radioactive, wouldn't set off detectors and wouldn't be arresting people for trying to sell it.

a reply to: Bedlam

The emission is the same inside your body or out…the becquerels won't vary.

The difference between internal vs external sources is the key.

One you can walk away from, like an X-ray or airline flight. The source is external, once the flight or X-ray machine is turned off, the emissions stop. The other you carry within you, you can't walk away form an internal source and you can't turn the mini X-ray machine off.

Cells adjacent to the source are exposed in a flux, like shooting a machine gun in random directions, some cells are destroyed and die, others heal. Still others may mutate, potentially giving rise to cancer.

Thats the whole problem with Radioactive substances in the environment, our air, food and water, they get inside us in a process of bio accumulation and therein reside, irradiating away, far longer than you are alive.

a reply to: Bedlam

It also doesn't STAY vaporized, and precipitates out as dust.

Derp. The problem with DU penetrators (Depleted Uranium). Dust blowing in the wind, stirred up by vehicles, kids playing, people digging.

You keep saying the stuff wasn't harmful. Yah they found it, not only the article in the OP describes other events trying to sell other (non specified) material on the black-market. The ones they caught anyway.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: Bedlam

First it wasn't dangerous because it wasn't "refined" now, its not "enriched".

And which one is wrong? Both are true. And it's not dangerous radioactively, because uranium isn't very radioactive. Refined OR enriched, and certainly not as ore. Of course, if you'd like to consider it as ore in the OP, I'll make even more fun of your position.

Pffft…

Ok. Let's hear you rationalize how external alphas are an issue. I'll wait.

Then its considered stable, not radioactive, wouldn't set off detectors and wouldn't be arresting people for trying to sell it.

Hey, you're the one that said half life didn't matter whatsoever. Obviously you now agree that you were totally wrong. Thanks.