Take a swimming pool and cover the bottom with Strontium-90 in the form of something insoluble, maybe strontium titanate. Not only do you have free and reliable heat source, but the emission of beta particles into the water will cause Cerenkov radiation, which will give the pool a healthy blue glow that will look awesome.

From a safety standpoint, you could put some webbing down to provide some separation between the users of the pool and the strontium, but beta radiation won't penetrate very far into water anyway.

I don't know why, but I have a feeling that if I was having dinner at your house and asked you to pass the salt, you would hand me a container of oil immersed sodium and a hose connected to a tank full of chlorine.

Would you like regular salt, or would you prefer HAL Light?

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I'll take regular salt. I think I can get away with only having an eyebrow blown off.

But cool right?

Warm, actually.

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"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Very cool. There should be an award for this sort of thing. You should have a segment on the TV show, "I Can't Believe it's Not Fatal."

Haha.

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Plus you'd save a bundle on outdoor lighting.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

The only two questions that need asking are:

1) Is Cerenkov radiation harmful?
2) Is strontium titanate soft?

3) How much does strontium titanate cost to cover a pool with?

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

If you have to ask...

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Make that strontium titanate enriched with Sr-90.

Note to self: Find excuse to miss pool party at 777 geek's.

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All moderation in purple

Why does this remind me of the commercial with Ellen DeGeneres where she says here suit always bursts into flames after she goes swimming?

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Okay, complications. Sr-90 is fine, but I hadn't considered the decay chain. Sr-90 decays to Y-90, which has a half-life of 2.67d and by both beta and gamma emission at over 2MeV each! Y-90, then decays to Zr-90, which is stable fortunately.

But the point is that Y-90 may be too hazardous to be present. I haven't even considered the chemical factors. Y and Zr are transition metals, but will they come free of the ceramic when formed?

Further modelling is also necessary to determine the power generation from the ceramic taking into account the production of Y-90.

What you need to do forget about Strontium 90 and use Strongium 90 like in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Then everyone who swims in the pool will become super powered.

Maybe not. Yttrium oxide and zirconium oxide both form very stable ceramics (yttrium stablized zirconia is very tough stuff and very corrosion resistant). But I'm not sure how they will behave as minor components in some system and the radiochemistry changes this (radiation damage to solids, particularly alpha particle and neutron damage)

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Right. That zirc is very stable.

But re the Strontium-90, ingest enough and you've committed the ultimate boner. Plus it definitely has an effect on the gene pool, warm or not.

But none of that matters, because the overriding factor is, IT'S COOL!

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Well there's no alpha emission and certainly no neutron emission. Strontium-90 is a pure beta emitter. Yttrium-90 is a beta and a gamma emitter.

It's the gamma part that worries me. The gamma ray is strong too. Over 2 MeV.

If you're worried about ingestion, you could partition the pool like a sandwich, laying a sheet of plastic or tempered glass under which any dissolved metals would remain. From bottom up, it would go pool bottom, Sr-90 (and others), water, plastic, water, surface. You'd still get the colour, and the heat could transfer through the partition. Then it's just a matter of finding a clear plastic that can withstand the radiation.

Did I mention that I think this idea is amazingly cool?

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Like this?
Why not just use submersible lighting.

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*

It's the LEGION OF POOL HEROES!

Raftman! The Chlorinator! WaterWings! Drainpipe! And the dreaded Warmspot!


Pool Heroes, AWAY!

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "shock and awe"!

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I'd recommend eating your Tums before jumping in, just in case. Calcium will tend to block strontium absorption. That's the issue (well, one of the issues) I'd have with this: strontium is bioactive.

Cool, audacious, and completely impractical.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I've done some modelling and starting out from pure strontium ceramic, after about three weeks, it will settle out into a steady state heating of around 2kW/kg.

I still don't know what to do about that pesky gamma radiation from the yttrium-90. That's the real show stopper in this concept.

How would the chlorine and bromine in the water treatment affect it, if at all?
What about other "biological" fluids in the water?
Also, how long will this heat be generated? I assume the water will need to be circulated and cooled to stop it from eventually coming to a boil.

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The motto for our pool:

OOL

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Big question. I've asked a chemist friend of mine about it.

Quite a while. Most heat comes from Y-90 and Y-90 levels is determined by the decay of Sr-90 and that has a half-life of 88 years. Even after 1000 days, heating is still 90% of what is was at peak.

Not at all. There is natural convection, which will transfer the heat to surface and out to atmosphere as happens with the heat from a normal pool heating system. If you put the appropriate amount of material in, you're fine. I've heard from unofficial sources that a pool heater with dissipate around 3kW, so we're talking about 1.5kg of material. Of course, I'm assuming 100% enrichment of Sr-90. For less enrichment reduce the specific heating by the appropriate factor.

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