Huh!

they?

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

they mine pure strontium then synthsize it into sr90

If you good provide a reference for that, that would be cool. I would like to correct the Wikipedia entry that says it is only available as a fission by-production, but I would need a reference to cite for that.

Also, what is the cost of this synthesis? I once read that we have the ability to turn lead into gold (using neutrons knocked out of beryllium from a proton accelerator, I think) but the cost is like a way more than the gold is worth.

I would be interested in seeing the proposed mechanism for that synthesis, since that's going to take some mighty interesting steps.

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I would like to see that as well since, for instance, it is fourteen steps to go from U238 to Pb206.

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(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily avaiable to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

I know you are a person who takes his physics seriously, but isn't it said that most great discoveries aren't discovered with "Eureka!" but with, "Hmmm, that's funny." Big Don

In this case, we're talking about going from Sr⁸⁸ to Sr⁹⁰, which at the very least would require a double neutron capture..

Actually, ace holmes talked about mining pure strontium which in itself is nonsense, so I expect the rest was as well.

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

Well, let's give the gentleman the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he can produce a reference for us.

The fact that Sr⁸⁹ only has a 50.52 day half life doesn't help either!
Not only does it not stick around long, but while it is around it is so hot makes Sr⁹⁰ seem benign.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

You lost me - where does Sr⁸⁹ enter into this?

Double neutron capture.

Sr⁸⁸ + n -> Sr⁸⁹ + n -> Sr⁹⁰.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

If we irradiate a sample of naturally occuring Sr⁸⁸ with neutrons, a small percentage of the atoms capture a neutron and become Sr⁸⁹. A tiny percentage of those may capture another one to become Sr⁹⁰, but the odds against two neutron captures by the same atom are very long. We would need to have a large amount of 89 to get a usable sample of 90 by this means. Since 90 is an abundant fission product from U²³⁵, it is much easier to recover it from the reactor waste.

any way
Since the United States has large stockpiles of 90Sr and, since 90Sr has a
relatively long half-life, we are not producing and recovering additional
amounts of 90Sr for commercial applications.

i forgot 420 was a holiday srry

I see Sr89 is also a -beta source with about three times the intensity of Sr90, so
Sr89 might work well in an RTG? The shorter half life = 51 days may not be a severe disadvantage? If the world uses a ton of Sr90 per year, then ten tons is a large stock pile, but ten tons only makes about 20,000 RTGs. Neil

i think maybe short lived isotopes at least a year but have to be cheap but none are affordable look em up sr90 po210 cs137 co60 cm244 cm242 pm147 ru106 pu238 ce144 pm147 sr90 last 30 yrs only 7200 but po210 2/5 a year same price only two grams (more than enough)
only option is european breeders (reactor for the pupose of fallout) us could make some they tried in the early 21st centuary but gave up on it
and try using metric ur reali confusing
its actualy around 170,000 cars 340,000 rtg each car has two( i used a calculator this time ) one year of mass production on ford level

how many drivers in us also i didnt really think of it but yeah u could power your home like a generator would since u cant turn off the heat kinda like a mini reactor

I agree, my estimate was way low, so ten tones would reduce green house gas sufficiently to be worth the project, if the problems are only moderately difficult. Potassium is more abundent and lower density than the others you mentioned. K40
(12 parts per million in natural potasium) has a very long half life and produces both beta- and beta+ Do we get gamma when anialation of the antimater occurs? If so, more energy, but gamma penetrates the confinment. Neil

I like the idea of nuclear cars a great deal. Nuclear material basically gives you a hot well that never (for values of "never" in the range of the product lifespan) goes cold - you could set up any number of energy extraction schemes to turn it into power for an electric vehicle. And unlike conventional electric vehicles, the energy/mass ratio is easily high enough to give the vehicle all the range it needs. (The real trick is to get the power/mass ratio high enough to push a vehicle).

If the isotope in question is on an alpha/beta decay series, then all the shielding necessary is a sheet of metal or two. Gamma and neutron isotopes are a little more dangerous.

As for dirty bombs - they're a joke really. (Especially if said dirty bomb was trying to employ an alpha/beta emitter) Unless your radioactive material has an extremely short half-life (cobalt-60 or something) you wouldn't even manage to poison anyone before they left the area and washed off the debris. The bomb part would be, by far, the most dangerous part of the device. You can do far more dangerous things with commonly available chemicals, which, fortunately, the general public managed to get their hands on before the government began seeing it as their place to deny them anything more active than water.

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It still has to be more efficient to have a central nuclear generating plant and just plug the cars in to charge batteries

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