borrowedlawyer
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Thorium Nitrate
I hope this does not come across as spam/advertising. I just found a good deal for those interested.
I was browsing eBay and found this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Thorium-Nitrate-ACS-reagent-100g-/22...
Awesome price, normal price is $600 - $800. Starting bid is $0.99. But price will go up a bit as it is an auction.
[Edited on 17-10-2012 by borrowedlawyer]
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Hexavalent
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Is it OK to post, as it is radioactive?
"Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill
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ElectroWin
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$600 - $800 for 100 grams?? doubtful.
OK to post? sure, why not
but the seller doesn't ship to Canada. 
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borrowedlawyer
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Check with customs if radioactive items are allowed in, I don't see why not for this as it only moderately radioactive. Then send the seller a message
that it is allowed in.
Also for the person in Canada, just send the seller a message. Also about the price, that is around the same price offered by others.
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zenosx
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pretty sure this falls under ORM-D like my uranium ore did when I purchased that.
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roamingnome
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Coming out Tennessee.....................................
someone just got lucky as Oak Ridge is being slowly dismantled and shut down. Probably got it threw auction or contract.
Alot of great research came out of ole oak ridge.....
Th-232 by itself can be used for alot of neat expirments
but if one could build themselves a mini molten thorium reactor ..now that would impress me.....
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borrowedlawyer
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Found some cheap mercury
Any interested in Mercury in the UK: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LIQUID-MERCURY-/230881284864?pt=UK...
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Endimion17
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I highly doubt that's the case here. Fresh thorium compounds are moderately radioactive and pretty radiotoxic (not extremely like plutonium, though),
but this is obviously an old sample.
Old thorium nitrate crystals are packed with radon-228, radon-224 and radon-220, and if the bottle has been sealed for decades, there's a high radon
buildup inside. We're talking about significant levels here, not traces present inside homes built above granite floor.
There's transient actinium and polonium inside, too.
Long story short, very old samples (and let's face it, if you can get hands of one, it must be ancient) are significantly more radioactive than
freshly isolated, and the fact one of the radionuclides comes as a noble gas responsible for pulmonary cancer makes things kind of eerie, don't you
think?
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unionised
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"Old thorium nitrate crystals are packed with radon-228, radon-224 and radon-220, and if the bottle has been sealed for decades, there's a high radon
buildup inside"
No, not really.
After a while (decades) thorium would be in equilibrium with radon. There's only 1 isotope of radon produced by thorium. It (220) has a half life of
about a minute. The ratio of the numbers of atoms of Thorium to Radon is the same as the ratio of their half lives (about 1 in 10^18).
And that would decay away in ten minutes if you opened the bottle to let it out. (of course, most of it would never get out of the crystal lattice-
diffusion would be slower than decay.)
Old samples are more radioactive then fresh ones. But in the case of thorium it's about a dozen times more active. Also, remember that any rock with
thorium in is automatically "old".
So, overall you have something roughly as radioactive as the Th (and decay products) in 16 tonnes of dirt.
I still think customs will object to it.
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Endimion17
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Quote: Originally posted by unionised  | "Old thorium nitrate crystals are packed with radon-228, radon-224 and radon-220, and if the bottle has been sealed for decades, there's a high radon
buildup inside"
No, not really.
After a while (decades) thorium would be in equilibrium with radon. There's only 1 isotope of radon produced by thorium. It (220) has a half life of
about a minute. The ratio of the numbers of atoms of Thorium to Radon is the same as the ratio of their half lives (about 1 in 10^18).
And that would decay away in ten minutes if you opened the bottle to let it out. (of course, most of it would never get out of the crystal lattice-
diffusion would be slower than decay.)
Old samples are more radioactive then fresh ones. But in the case of thorium it's about a dozen times more active. Also, remember that any rock with
thorium in is automatically "old".
So, overall you have something roughly as radioactive as the Th (and decay products) in 16 tonnes of dirt.
I still think customs will object to it. |
Are you sure? I'm looking at its decay chain and I see more. There's even beta-decay.
The rate of diffusion is very slow, but if someone wishes to do some experiments, he'll make an aqueous solution and then any radon can just evaporate
away.
I'm not saying old bottles of thorium compounds are a serious radiological hazard, but nevertheless I wouldn't want to work with it in homemade
environment except if it's microchemistry, demo experiment, to see how it behaves. Any other stuff like the stuff we've all been doing with common
salts such as copper sulphate, no way.
Amateur chemists often don't understand how easily it is to disperse material around, even when they're careful.
My main point is that because of decay product buildup, Geiger counters would detect beta-rays at customs. They have those things there and if they
see a bottle of thorium they'll check it out.
It might be 16 tonnes of "special" dirt, but hey, it's concentrated in one small bottle. There's an invisible fireworks going off in that bottle.
If I only had a counter, I'd check it out myself. I do have access to such bottle (I saw the compound, it looks boring  ) and I'm really curious about the level of beta-rays going through the glass.
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watson.fawkes
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| Quote: Originally posted by Endimion17 | | My main point is that because of decay product buildup, Geiger counters would detect beta-rays at customs. They have those things there and if they
see a bottle of thorium they'll check it out. |
It doesn't take much shielding to attenuate the beta radiation
to below background, particularly with only 100g of source material. I'd have to do some detailed calculations to be certain, but 1 mm of aluminum
seems like it would do it, say, as a small tool case. Alternately 10 mm - 15 mm of wood, in the form of a crate. A plastic box might do it as well.
I'm not asserting the eBay seller is going to do anything of the sort, merely that it's not as difficult as it might seem. In particular, since
there's not a lot of γ coming off thorium, you don't need high-Z materials like lead that also block X-rays and are thus a red flag for
luggage screening.
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