Actually, diluted Kr 81 is available commercially and (normally) has a fairly
low decay rate. Chemically speaking, this mixture is utterly
non-reactive--therefore, nontoxic. I believe it is usually diluted into Argon
gas and is not terribly radioactive. The average house in my town is more
contaminated by Radon gas. In contrast, your house is already filled with
highly-radioactive, highly-chemically reactive Americium in the form of smoke
detectors. (A few years ago, a private citizen actually collected enough smoke
detectors to make a small breeding reactor the Tri-City Area of Washington
State!) I'm not sure, but I believe that Kr 81 is still used in Vacuum Tube
applications to keep the gas near the filaments ionized. (Yes, true
audiophiles still prefer vacuum tubes since they transmit both odd and even
harmonics, unlike solid-state!)
Raney nickel and similar preparations is used in many labs.
Raney Nickel is a common feature of any lab that is working on just about any
Chemical Catalysts. Besides, there is no fire hazard if the Raney Nickel is
just kept in an inert gas (like Argon and Kr 81.
Informal results wouldn't get published, but would nonetheless help in getting
the right people to perform better experiments. It shouldn't matter what you
are using, if introducing a gas to an evacuated jar that
Scott
From: jone...@pacbell.net
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: RE: [Vo]:Why not Kr 85 and Raney Nickel experiment?
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2010 15:20:00 -0800
From:
Wm. Scott Smith
Ø Why
hasn't anybody tested Kr 81 or 85 in activated Raney Nickel powder to see if
the decay rate changes
Hmm … let me count a
few of the reasons
1) Lack of funding and proper facilities
2) Even if you have a fume hood and vacuum sealed glove box, this would
be dangerous
3) Requires a NRC license and buying enough gas, in the amounts
needed to pressurize a sample, is very expensive.
4) Even with a license and a willing supplier, ordering any such
material arouses suspicion of Dept of HS
5) For anyone who does not want the attention – a few radioactive
gases could be extracted from ore, or collected/ manufactured in situ but this
creates problems for anyone
wanting to replicate.
6) There is no assurance that Krypton would absorb into Raney nickel
without pressurization in the first place, and loading usually requires lots of
gas, which then contaminates all your equipment.
7) If you were going to do the experiment at all; using reproducible
technique, tritium would probably be preferable, and all of the same negatives
apply.
8) Even a wildly successful experiment would absolutely NOT be published
in a peer reviewed journal, unless you worked for a National Lab.
9) Activated Raney nickel itself is as almost as dangerous to handle
as an explosive – witness Rossi’s two fires that burned down the entire
labs.
There are probably more
reasons than this, but a fair appraisal of the risks involved would lead me to
think that it would require $150,000 minimum, and half of that goes to cleanup
and disposal.
IMO – if all you
want is the results for internal use – it would best be done with radon
derived from natural sources (pitchblende ore) mixed with un-activated Raney
and activated in a disposable reactor. There would be cross comparison with a
control. This makes the experiment hard to calibrate and open to criticism.
