Re: possible sources for sheet lead and mineral/ transformer oil?

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net> 

Wow.. we're getting a bit off the Tesla topic, but there's just so many
inaccuracies flying about, I couldn't hold back.
Terry, moderate if you will..


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2004 10:34 AM
Subject: RE: possible sources for sheet lead and mineral/ transformer oil?


 > Original poster: "Carl Litton" <Carl_Litton-at-hilton-dot-com>
 >
 > Good catch, David.  Actually ionizing radiation (high energy photons or
 > particles) have the ability to transmute atoms of a given element into
 > another element or isotope of the same element - often a radioactive
 > one.  This principle is sometimes used in particle accelerators to
 > create a given element and in the so-called 'breeder' fission reactors.

Perhaps one might transmute things with "some" ionizing radiation, that is,
if there are actual particles involved (helium nuclei, electrons, protons,
and most notoriously, neutrons), but not with photons (xrays, gamma etc.),
which are neutral particles with NO rest mass (unlike all the rest).  Yes,
it is conceivable that a high enough energy photon might get captured by a
nucleus, causing the nucleus to fission, and there might be daughter
products of that fission that would be radioactive, or the fission might
cause another (non-zero rest mass) particle to be emitted which would then
cause transmutation. Off hand, though, this is pretty unlikely.

Breeder reactors, to take a specific example, have incredibly high fluxes of
neutrons, which DO cause transmutations, although, as someone pointed out,
there are resonance effects, so the neutrons might have to be at a
particular energy for the reaction to occur. Most  notoriously, U238
absorbing a neutron before fissioning requires that the neutron be slowed
down (moderated).  U235 does not, making, being able to fission with fast
neutrons.  Pu239, likewise, can fission with fast neutrons, hence the use of
these two in bombs.

Likewise, in an accelerator, it has to be a particle that is being
accelerated (electrons, protons, etc.) for transmutation to occur.  You
can't acclerate a neutron or photon (xray, e.g.), because they have no
charge.  They essentially get "made" at a particular energy by some other
reaction, typically the collision of some charged high energy particle with
a target (electrons hitting metal, in the case of xrays, alpha particles
hitting something like Beryllium, in the case of neutrons, or, for example,
deuterium hitting deuterium for neutrons).  Fission, spontaneous, or not,
can also create high energy particles because of the loss of the nuclear
binding energy.

In any case, you can't transmute things by bombarding them with photons
(gamma or x-rays, or sunlight, or heat, etc.)

 > It seems rather unlikely that hospital wall lining material from x-ray
 > or nuclear medicine therapy would have much of this occurring.

Awful unlikely.. in fact, perhaps not within the realm of practical
possibility, short of some egregious contamination incident.
 >
 > The stuff about 'giving it up all at once' is not clear as to what
 > physical process is being referred to.  The so-called 'nuclear accident'
 > which occasionally occurs with purified Plutonium 239, whereupon it
 > suddenly and violently ejects an immensely intense and lethal discharge
 > of neutrons would simply not occur with lead wall lining.

True.. And, in the case of Pu, what you're talking about is a criticality
accident, and can occur with Uranium as well. It's not spontaneous, in that
it requires assembling a sufficient amount of the material within a small
enough volume.  Either the stuff you've got is above critical mass (in which
case you've got a problem) or it isn't.  It won't suddently "burp out"
radiation. The most recent criticality accident I know of was the one in
Japan about 4 years ago, where the workers filled a bucket with too much
Uranium in solution.  Oops...

Mind you, critical mass does depend on the physical shape and surroundings:
A notorious case at Los Alamos stemmed from a researcher's body mass
providing sufficient neutron reflection to make an assembly go critical. So,
one can be surprised.
 >
 > Certainly, if radioactive species had been formed over time, subjecting
 > the material to smelting could result in concentration of these if
 > density/solubility differences in the liquid phase resulted in formation
 > of layers.  Once again the likelihood of fission or transmutation
 > products in hospital wall shielding is vanishingly small.

Aside from the unlikelihood of the transmutation occurring in any
significant quantity (the first amounts of Pu (micrograms) were made by
weeks and weeks of bombarding targets in an accelerator at Berkeley), the
chances of it being concentrated in a melting/cooling process are pretty
low, especially given the turbulence in the material during the melting
process.  Perhaps if you had something that was 20% the bad stuff, you might
separate it out, but it's a real challenge to separate small amounts things
by melting and cooling. Zone refining, as used to purify silicon, is an
example of the process, but isn't something that you'd casually take on over
a propane burner in the backyard.
 >
 > Carl Litton

The hazards from the lead are far more of a problem than any possible
radiological hazard.

I'd worry about inhaling lead fumes.  Lead boils at a remarkably low
temperature and has a fairly high vapor pressure, even if not boiling.

  I'd also worry more about getting lead on your skin and then inadvertently
eating it.

Things such as this are the  reason that they are banning lead containing
solder (to the consternation of everyone in the electronics business).