UnderTheRadar

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stupidchicken03

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Also, writing a very lengthy, Amazon review for our baking sheets... and how they did not perform as expected (under the car).....

stupidchicken03

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the last clip

Rev. Rob Large

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Ah, tritium--a naturally-occurring radioactive isotope of hydrogen with one orbital electron, one proton and two neutrons. Tritium has two natural formation processes. First is neutron-activation of elemental nitrogen: N-14 + n-1 -> H-3 + C-12. The other is via collisions of elemental hydrogen: H-2 + H-2 -> H-3 + H-1. Manufactured, or man-made, tritium is produced by neutron-activation of elemental hydrogen: H-2 + n-1 -> H-3. Due to the excess mass-energy of the two neutrons, the unstable tritium atom undergoes radioactive decay emitting a negatively-charged beta particle and anti-neutrino. Since the emitted nuclear electron leaves behind a net-positively charged nucleus, in order to conserve charge, one of the neutrons becomes to a positively charge proton. The now net-positively charged ion attracts a free electron (leptons are merely space trash) to form a stable helium (He-3) atom.

Tritium isn’t interesting—it binds with water, it’s an internal health risk due to the beta radiation, they use it for painting illuminated objects like watches and gun sights blah blah blah.

The interesting part here is the “conversion” of a neutron to a proton. What? Yes, nucleons can “change their stripes”, if you will, when necessary. The rest energy or rest mass (we miss you, Al.) of a neutron is slightly higher than a proton so when a neutron decides it wants to come out and be a proton, despite what it’s parents and society will think, then excess rest mass energy has to be accounted for—the ejected nuclear electron and its kinetic energy.

UnderTheRadar

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Damn...that poor penguin

stupidchicken03

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Going off what i remember reading from yesterday, it can either be man made (as a byproduct of reactors?) and more more rarely in nature when hydrogen is exposed to crazy rays (or something) in the atmosphere, yes?

I remember it has a 10-12 year half life, so the gun sights and watches will continue to glow for about that long same with some street signs that get coated with it.

Once it binds with water, there is no real "efficient" way to remove it. No watering plants or filters for home can remove it. I forget where it was, but street signs that were coated then ended up in the local dump. After X amount of time in a trash pile and being exposed to rain, the water was then soaked up into the earth. In that area the drinking water was exposed to much higher than normal or "allowed" levels. The US has the smallest levels to be considered "ok" to drink. I guess onces its ingested, as long as its a rare occasion (and small quantity), it does not survive long in the human body.

Also if tritium attaches it self to a mist/vapor and someone breathes it in, 100% of the tritium in the vapor gets absorbed into the lungs. Its also a small enough atom (?) to be absorbed through the human skin with not a large amount of being "watered down".

The fun things (of no importance?) you can learn from being seemingly bored at work

The Law

I have tritium on my carry pew and a little vial with tritium in it.

stupidchicken03

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Yea bdawg has the tritium sights too. Cool in the dark haha

Chris GTO TT

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I need some for my XD9

The Law

Yeah they do look awesome in the dark.

Here:
You're welcome.

Rev. Rob Large

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Either a byproduct or actual manufacturing, but yes. Nuclear reactors generally use fuel or radioactive materials that give off lots and lots of neutrons.

Tritium in the environment is usually the result of cosmic ray (radiation or particles from beyond Earth's atmosphere) interactions in the atmosphere with either hydrogen or nitrogen. Buuuuut.. thanks to all the nuclear weapons testing of the past half century or so, tritium production has increased several orders of magnitude thanks to all the neutrons the detonations gave off. Neutrons plus hydrogen (the single most abundant atom in the universe) or neutrons plus nitrogen (the most abundant atom in our atmosphere) and you have tritium.

We get a lot waste tritium from old "EXIT" signs, too. Before they were illuminated with light bulbs, they were painted with phosphorescent tritiated paint.

The mechanism for the phosphorescence is pretty cool, too. Tritium gives off negatively-charged beta particles, which, for all intents and purposes, are electrons. These electrons collide with the phosphorescent material and either get stuck or the collide with other electrons in the materials causing excitation. The de-excited electrons then give their energy in the form of visible light.

The fact that hydrogen -- and tritium is hydrogen -- is everywhere is both good and bad. Hydrogen, and thus tritium, binds really well with oxygen to make.. WATER. The ubiquity of water makes tritium a popular isotope for use as a biological or chemical tracer to study pathways of transport of materials either in a living organism, in the environment, etc. It's also bad because, hydrogen binds really well with oxgyen to make water and water is everywhere and gets into everything. Also, since tritium, at most temperatures, is a gas, it's very tricky to contain and can make clean up a nightmare. Generally, the only way to remediate tritium contamination is dig it up, seal it and store it away until it decays away.

Also if tritium attaches it self to a mist/vapor and someone breathes it in, 100% of the tritium in the vapor gets absorbed into the lungs. Its also a small enough atom (?) to be absorbed through the human skin with not a large amount of being "watered down".[/quote]

Remember, it's the radiation emitted from the tritium that's the hazard and not the tritium itself.

Tritium poses a fairly substantial internal hazard from the beta radiation, the very mechanism that makes it useful. Externally, it's not very harmful since beta particles don't travel very far in air and don't penetrate much past the dead layers of skin on your body. Internally, since, again, it binds well with oxygen to make tritiated water and your body is mostly water, it spreads throughout the body fairly quickly. Luckily, since our bodies expel water fairly efficiently (sweat, urination, breathing, etc.) and there are ways to accelerate these processes, the biological half-life (amount of time it spends in your body) of tritium is much much shorter than the radioactive half-life and internal dose can be minimized.

I've made a career of it. Radiation protection, not the learning fun, but seemingly unimportant things you learn from being bored at work. lol

There's a couple USSR-era compasses with tritiated-painted dials on my boss's desk. Pretty cool stuff.

The Law

Picture of said compass? Cause that sounds like pretty cool items to own.

stupidchicken03

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And today I learned.

The Law

Ugh the snow at sierra at Tahoe looks amazing......and the weather....ugh....why am I here and not up in the mountains!?!?

https://www.sierraattahoe.com/mounta...tions/web-cams

Rev. Rob Large

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The training center in Oak Ridge has console button from the control room of reactor #4 at Chernobyl. If you put a meter to it, it still has very detectable levels of Cs-137. That was, by far, the coolest thing I've seen.

We get all the fun stuff. Anything with radioactive material or can produce radiation (X-ray machines, etc.) that gets confiscated, comes here. In our branch storage facility we have a bunch of stainless steel tissue boxes Bed Bath & Beyond sold and had to take off their shelves because the manufacturer in India, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was an accident, smelted down some very large amounts cobalt-60 in the same vat they used to make the steel for these boxes and were pretty hot, radiologically. We have a bunch of old FiestaWare from the 70s that has uranium ore in the orange paint used to decorate them. We have some glow-in-the-dark glass marbles made from uranium. Coleman lantern mantles made with thorium. All of these are "common household items" that were very radioactive. None of them posed any really threat, but they do have elevated and very detectable levels of radioactive material(s) in them.

One of our inspectors/enforcement guys purportedly has a very extensive collection of items he has taken possession of or has confiscated over the years in his garage at home. When I asked if that was legal for him to have that stuff at his home, he scoffed and said, "Who are they gonna call, me?" lol