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thaflyemcee
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AmO2 dissolves quite readily in conc. HCl, and once you have AmCl3, it is also quite soluble (and reactive). Good luck drying it do do any sort of
nonaqueous coordination chemistry, though. The standard method seems to be a hot stream of the appropriate HX (X=halide), and getting a sufficient
quantity to manipulate into a holder will be tough.
In addition, it's EXCEEDINGLY radioactive. U presents more danger as a heavy metal than as a radiation source, but even small amounts of Am are
radiological hazards.
[Edited on 24-11-2011 by thaflyemcee]
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neptunium
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the cool thing about Am is its powerfull alpha ray emission which can be used for all sorts of transmutations....but mostly for neutron source along
with beryllium
if one smoke detector cant provide enough Americium , 10 of them will yield 10 times more ....or 20 whatever.
add a solution of a beryllium salt ,evaporate , melt the spec of dust in the flame of a blowtorch and you are left with a tiny amount of an Am/Be
neutron source...if you get enough 2 achive 1e6 neutron/second you could start activating stuff !
if you have a gamma spectrometer you could analys trace amount of metal (giving the cross section to neutron is big enough)
doesnt get any better than that!
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unionised
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If my memory serves me correctly the best yield for neutron production from beryllium is something like one neutron for each million alphas.
If each of those neutrons was captured by some suitable material and gave a fairly short lived radioisotope (Perhaps Manganese since it's moniisotopic
and the activation product has a half life of a few hours.) then after a while (roughly the decay half life) the material would be emitting radiation
at the same rate that it was being hit by neutrons.
So, if you got about a million smoke detectors you could make a sample of radioactive Mn that was roughly as radioactive as... a smoke detector.
Good luck finding any evidence of activation.
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neptunium
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if 1curie is about 37e9 dps then one source is about 37000 becquerel (or dps)
we`ll need 27 sources to get 1 neutron per second...or 27 000 000 to get 1 million neutron..
well you could use uranium ore and seperate chemicaly the radium....if you had 1000 kg you could end up with enough Radium...hell Marie Curie did it !
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neptunium
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the source could be placed in a parrafine chamber or in water to slow and bounce neutrons back to the target( giving a small enough chamber ) i
suppose a long enough exposure could be detectable with a Cd/Te detector? or could it ?
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Endimion17
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Yeah, Marie did it, and she got leukaemia. I wonder what happened to Petit, their assistant. He's the somewhat muscular guy with moustaches often seen
in the photographs working over boiling vessels (pitchblende processing). He was probably the most contaminated person working there, sweating for
hours while boiling and precipitating, concentrating the ore.
If someone knows what happened to him, be sure to post it here.
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