Amazon suspends Uranium sales -- no fear, get it here
Amazon's halted sales of uranium through its website (see here for last week's post), but John Iovine from Images Scientific Instruments says, "For anyone who wishes to purchase the uranium ore, it is perfectly legal and license exempt, they can purchase this uranium ore sample or a number of license-exempt radioactive isotopes directly through our website."
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I don't know how safe I would feel ordering a product from a company that puts the radiation symbol up-side down on their products. It always rubs me the wrong way when people do that. Because someone who doesn't care if a legal warning device looks proper, doesn't care much about their products. Radiation trefoils are legal devices in Canada, maybe not in the states. But you can only put one on something that is genuinely a controlled substance.
I think the radiation sign is the right way and that you're standing on your head or reading this in NZ...
I remember way back when, among ceramicists and glass-blowers, uranium ore was practically the holy grail needed in order to achieve a distinctive and particular kind of transluscent/transmitting color to glazes and glasses. The feds had listed all uranium ore as a strategic material and forbid the possession of it by those who had no legitimate defense related need. Now let's get back to making glass that glowed with the wonder of a time before the a-bomb.
Not so bad either: the nine page list of "Customers Who Bought Items Like This Also Bought" that contains mainly crotchless panties in all shapes and sizes...
Best Christmas present ever.
Dude, I can't buy nyquil in the local drugstore, but now I can buy uranium from amazon. Now I can sleep.
@Dogu4: I did a Google image search for "radiation trefoil" and they were all 180 degrees different from the one on that can.. So my highly scientific study says that Sunborn was right!
I'm sorry they took it down. The reviews were incredibly hilarious.
Uranium 238 is not fissionable, so good luck trying to make a bomb out of it.
Also, camp lantern mantles put out more radiation than Uranium ore. Hell, your cigarettes put out almost as much.
My high school physics lab had some of this stuff. We used it to make "cloud chambers" (look it up) and to test gieger counters. Of course, this was 20+ years ago.
If you order this by mail, is it delivered to you by a pair of gentlemen wearing black suits, dark sunglasses and earpieces with the little white wire disappearing into their collar?
theMage:
U-238 is fissionable. It just takes an incident neutron with a kinetic energy of about 6 MeV. U-238 isn't fissile, like U-235. This means that any energy neutron can destabilize the nucleus and cause fission (including thermal energies). This has to do with odd/even number of protons and neutrons in the atom. A nuclide with a high atomic mass number (above thorium) and an odd number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus is a fissile nuclide. An even number is just fissionable (and it will take a high energy neutron to cause fission, typically >5 MeV). U-233 is fissile, Pu-239 is fissile, but Th-232 isn't nor is Pu-238 (used for RTGs).
This is notable since some thermonuclear bombs actually use high energy neutrons from the fusion reactions to cause fission in a layer of U-238. The multi megaton bombs get most of their energy from this fission. It is also notable since U-238 will be transmuted to Pu-239 when it absorbs a neutron which is a fissile fuel (this is how breeder reactors work).
Bzishi,
Thank you for the nuclear physics dissertation (that no one, on this thread, but you and I will understand).
I was making the point that no one is going to make a nuclear bomb out of this stuff (or even an effective dirty bomb for that matter).
P.S. you do realize how rare 6MeV protons are? If they were common we (I used to work at a nuclear power plant) would be using unmoderated reactors with all the rods made out of (realatively) cheap U238 instead of spending millions and millions to purify raw uranium to a U235 content of 3% (compared to the 99% needed for bombs).
Remember:
Every Little Fucking Pollack Loves the Fucking Navy