On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who hunt down <i>non</i>-radioactive steel.<p>Apparently the background radiation of the air increased after 1940s but there are equipment (like geiger counters) which need extremely low radiation for optimal sensitivity. The main source of these low background steel are currently from scavenging sunken naval ships!<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel</a>
I've been to a few antiques stores where they have a blacklight case to show off the fluorescent uranium glass teacups and candlesticks. If you don't have a blacklight with you, it's tough to tell the difference between truly radioactive glass colored with uranium salts, and green-tinted depression glass produced at the same time last century that is neither radioactive nor fluorescent. Depression glass has an interesting story all its own <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_glass" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_glass</a>)<p>It actually surprised me that you can buy uranium glass online on ebay or etsy. It's not controlled or anything, and there are some very weird old curios manufactured last century. (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=uranium+glass&_sacat=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...</a>). I bought a tiny little salt cellar this way once the desire to own something radioactive overcame me.<p>NileRed even made a video of manufacturing his own uranium glass <a href="https://youtu.be/RGw6fXprV9U?t=1048" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/RGw6fXprV9U?t=1048</a>
This is my dad. He's also a retired health physicist in nuclear power and now is distributing old civil defense Geiger counters to schools. Some other potential sources of radiation in the home are granite countertops, and of course radon...
I’ve got a small collection of uranium glass. It’s always fun to crank up the black light when friends come over. And it looks great at Halloween.<p>I have a couple pieces with manganese iirc which glows a faint orange. But it doesn’t compare to those nice emission lines off the uranium.
Glass that glows in a blacklight was the rage in artistic borosilicate glassblowing in recent years, also. The physics behind this is pretty interesting (electrons jumping levels and releasing excess energy). We all started carrying around UV flashlights at shows.<p>A US company called Northstar collaborated with Gaffer Glass from NZ to make a modern borosilicate uranium glass.
<a href="https://northstarglass.com/product/ns-137-ill-umanati/" rel="nofollow">https://northstarglass.com/product/ns-137-ill-umanati/</a><p>Along with their competitor Glass Alchemy, they also make several other formulas that fluoresce different colors like pink and blue. (Also check out glass that changes color in fluorescent lamps: <a href="https://northstarglass.com/product/tag-069-parallax/" rel="nofollow">https://northstarglass.com/product/tag-069-parallax/</a> )
The article just says the radiation is too low, but it matters to know. Some 30 years ago, it was possible to bring a glowing glass sphere as a souvenir from various Uranium mines in then Czechoslovakia.
There were numerous reports of acute radiation illness and cancers after that - one couple kept the sphere on the cupboard and therefore were exposed to direct radiation for many hours every day.
They both died with leukaemia and complications.
> When the plate registered as radioactive, someone at the school panicked and called in a hazmat team. The entire school was evacuated<p>Hope the school got called out for their incompetence. What hope do our children have if this is the competency our educators?
Other glasses that glow under UV:<p>* Cerium (blue white)<p>* Dysprosium (yellow-white)<p>* Europium (orange)<p>* Manganese (orange)<p>* Samarium (orange)<p>* Terbium (green)<p>I've only been able to find small samples of these, so I don't know how much glassware there is compared to uranium, though.
Not U glass, but I’ve been considering getting an orange Fiestaware set. I realize that modern dishes don’t contain U, but the symbolism is there.<p>However, I still haven’t bothered to look up pricing or where to order, let alone of ways of convincing my spouse that we absolutely need bright orange dishes for the family for street cred with a very niche crowd.
I totally do this, I love going to antique store and estate sales looking for orange feistaware, aircraft instruments with radium, radium painted watches and clocks. Uranium Glass. Basically if it makes the meter tick and it looks cool it will get added to my collection. As long as it's not anything loose or dusty. I.e. radium watch with a busted glass cover.<p>Don't forget thorium doped welding rods and thorium lantern mantles. :-)<p>I miss bionerd23's YT videos.
Are there any modern glassblowers who will touch uranium glass? The few I talked to thought I was insane for thinking they'd consider it. (In my defense, cadmium is very toxic but glassblowers don't seem to mind blowing cadmium glass.)
As for the fear of radiation, there is a fantastic xkcd with plenty of (relative) examples: <a href="https://xkcd.com/radiation/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/radiation/</a><p>Randall Munroe really has a strip for everything
The article every so slightly touches on radium products but doesn't expand on what those are, I suppose that's to draw less attention to them.<p>I sometimes take my Geiger counter with me when hitting flea-markets and such. In our area we have a very large fall festival way out in the country-side with lots of flea-markets setup. I found my first radium clock there, the guy selling it knew what was special about the clock and thought the geiger counter was neat, the piece I got gave off a mild CPM of about 600. This helped set the stage for me forgetting I live in a bubble of smart and educated and people around me at all times... Later that day I found another dealer with a large platter of antique watches. Woot! Pulled out the geiger counter again and found the tray had a number of very hot watches... and then I saw it. A radium dial watch missing the glass cover and covered in rust and dust, I only got a 20 second reading of around 6000CPM and then I realized my face was about 1 foot from this thing... The danger of radium clock hands is the paint flaking off and inhaling bits of radium dust. CPM is counts-per-minute, so that ~20 second reading I got before I was startled probably translates to ~18000CPM. I stopped and tried to explain to the dealer that he needed to take this watch and bag it and keep it away from the public, especially children that could have access. I was trying to explain what radium paint was and he stopped me and repeated "Radon what?". I tried again, he stopped again and repeated "Radon what?". It was at that moment my bubble collapsed and I realized I had gotten WAY off on the wrong foot. Radium was a word he had never heard, radon was the closest thing (it's not uncommon to have radon gas vents on house basements in our state to prevent buildups of radioactive radon gas). This guy got real quiet as I tried to dig myself out of my hold, but the damage was done. Another person working with him came over and I explained the issue to him, he understood but was making jokes about the government shutting them down or something. At this point I also remembered that there is a strong "prepper" vibe at this particular flea market area, and this poor fellow was probably afraid I'd someone get him "vanned" by the government. Anyway, I tried to buy some of the other watches from him and he outright told me he didn't want to talk to me any more, and that he was not going to sell me anything cause he didn't need for me to sue him for getting cancer or something. Right right, I'd dug a pretty large hole for myself and just needed to walk away, his weekend was ruined and now he had to figure out what to do with this radioactive watch he didn't understand at all.<p>So, I learned a bunch of things really quick that weekend. One of those things is that our country-side is littered with radioactive artifacts that most people have NO idea about. Most of them are harmless, but the radium stuff is still dangerous for another 1600 years even though the radium paint stopped glowing many decades ago. When people randomly get strange cancers I can't help but wonder if there's a lot more incidental exposure that goes on than people realize. I'm not saying all cancer victims had exposure, but it probably happens more than people suspect.<p>Another thing I learned was just how much of a bubble I exist in, and all of you reading this as well. You work with fellow smart people, your friends are smart. Probably your family too. My point is that we end up isolated from other classes of people and coming together is a good thing for multiple reasons. Think of those in classes above you too. Anyway, that's enough about that.
Oh noes, a kid brought a banana to school. Call the hazmat team!<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose</a><p>Edit: The BER of an average piece of 25% U glass is about 1300 bananas.<p>If it were possible to extract and enrich K40 from say 100 million bananas, you could kill everyone in the vicinity of it with a LD.<p>40 lbs box = 120 bananas at $13. So say $0.10 each. For a minimum investment of $10 million USD, you could have enough radioactive K40 to do some damage.. buried in tons of regular potassium that is expensive to enrich. Instead, for $10k / g, one could buy 1 kg of K40... if they could prove it was for a legitimate purpose.