Thomas Kirby

Get out of there, Ku, right now. Throw your clothes and kids in the car and leave. Get help from a mental health professional. These people are not worth what will be done to you if you do what you seem to be planning. If you truly are a good person, good people do not need another black eye on their reputations, and this will be one, don't fool yourself. Even your logic is bad. If you hurt or kill one of his children, he will happily do the same to you for revenge. He will even get a kick out of destroying you by turning you in to law enforcement. Then, you just don't know, but he has already threatened to hurt one of your children. You don't know when or how, but he is going to do something to that child. The first thing he gets to do is take away his father. If you harm one of those children I personally will see to it that you are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Knitelli: You are telling me that I am paranoid because I believe that people who have lied before are going to lie again. A certain person or agency has lied to me before and has shown a pattern of lying about a particular subject. According to you it's bad logic to think that the next time the same person or agency tells me pretty much the same story, and this case is pretty much the same kind of story, that they might follow the same pattern that they have in the past. According to you, even though they lied before, I am paranoid, mentally ill, and illogical if I don't simply take their word for it this time. Oh yes, surely your logic and your diagnosis of my mental state are flawless given the above. It's not because they have lied before. It's not because the published information saying the DU is safe contains obvious fallacies. It's not because they tell us that the people who have measured the radiation are crazy, or that people who even want to measure the radiation are crazy. It is because I personally have a character defect that I even consider the possibility that they might be lying.

Nations deal with threats by hurting other people's children, this is true.

Hopefully I get my 2 cents worth in before this thread is locked. If the neighbor's children are causing trouble, get pictures of it and turn them in to the authorities. No one need be without a camera these days. It's too obviously wrong to harm the children to get at the neighbor no matter what the neighbor is doing. Just one reason is because the children may also be his victims. He might even get off on someone harming them. If he threatens to harm your children, tell police and social services. I think that will do it.

Noted. The best point that I've come across in the last couple of days is that DU can burn in a fire. Steel burns too, and the fire is exothermic, and usually there is not enough oxygen available to make it a self-sustaining flame. This does mean that a hot enough fire can erode sheet metal away. And of course in the real world, if a potentially dangerous item is safe as long as it is not mishandled, abused, burned, or does not meet some other common mishap, it's not all that safe. The radiological hazard for inhaled uranium is greatly underestimated if we make some of the following mistakes: If we calculate for the radioactivity of pure U-238, which is one third of the activity (raw count of emissions, not energy) of U-238 that has aged six months. If we read the activity level for beta and alpha from the surface of a piece that has any thickness at all. If we don't account for the much smaller amount of body tissue that absorbs all of the alpha and beta and some of the gamma radiation. We also need to account for the fact that each particle is surrounded by body tissue. The body tissue captures 100 percent of the radiation of a particle embedded in it when it would only capture 50 percent or less of the radiation of a particle that is even a hundred microns away from the skin. Whatever dose we are talking about, the alpha portion is delivered to less than a millionth of the body mass. My mass of body tissue is roughly 100,000 ccs. If I went about eight cubic millimeters for the amount of tissue exposed to the alpha from the decay of U-238, that's about 1/1.25 * 10^7 of my body tissue. One over 12.5 million of my body tissue is exposed to about 12.5 million times the dose per unit of body mass that I would receive if the same amount of radiation were spread out all over my body. This is just counting the alpha, now. Alpha has that special property of not being able to travel a full millimeter in flesh. This also means that it deposits all of its ionizing energy within that millimeter. And I know that a sphere of one millimeter radius has a volume of less than 8 millimeters. 238 micrograms of U-238, a millionth of a mole, generates about 5.8 counts per second of alpha. That's a piece of dust well under a milligram in weight, and a bit smaller than a roach dropping. Maybe we could argue the merits of the view that inhaling particulates increases the damage to the exposed mass of body tissue by at least 10 million, and the damage is done to living tissue, not dead cells on the skin or hair. We could also argue the merits of the view that inhaling U-238 smoke introduces thousands, maybe millions of these particles, weights within a given range, and that each site that they park in becomes another area that receives massive radiation damage. Another idea to consider is that even on the surface of exposed skin, dust can work its way into living tissue.

And cancers develop much faster from small concentrated sources of radioactivity. In a whiff of the smoke from burning DU you get a tremendous number of tiny hotspots. Whether you think, in your best judgement, that the case against DU is "superstition", the same sources that claim that DU is safe first claimed that we were in no danger from the leakage from uranium processing plants, then revealed that we were pretty badly affected by that. Government and industry have a history of lying to us about many safety issues including radioactivity. Now you expect us to take the word of such sources and also to tolerate it when some of the same sources dismiss us as nutcases. We have liars calling people lunatics and hysterics. Even without the history, the habit of such namecalling labels the speaker as someone not to be trusted. When someone did write articles about finding intense radioactivity, someone else waved their arms around and labelled them as lunatics. Where did that get us? If I waved my arms around and called you a lunatic, you would disbelieve me just because of that. You would consider such behavior to be a legitimate excuse. Why do I not have the same right? The most painful and unfair part of this is that government and industry created the "mystification", but those who are affected by it are the ones who lose their jobs, their reputations, and often their lives because of it.

Speaking of the transport of nuclear waste, I am very certain that a large amount of the "paranoia" against depleted uranium has to do with the track records of government and industry. There has been mishandling of nuclear waste and other radioactive materials that has resulted in sickness and death. There have definitely been policies of concealment of problems in the past. When could it have been decided that the governments and industry stopped deceiving us? Straight answers in the beginning would have made it much more possible to trust the answers we are given now. If they used to lie to us and they tell us the truth now, how do we know when they started telling the truth? We have the history of sickness and death induced by mishandling radioactive materials. We have the history of government and industry concealing important facts. What would sane people believe?

I can't reply to this without getting screwed on warning points, so we can't go anywhere with this, sorry.

Uranium atoms don't disappear when they decay. They convert to other atoms. A small portion of the mass of the nucleus leaves as an alpha particle, another small portion as a gamma ray. Then you have Thorium-234. One beta particle and gamma ray later, you have Pa-234. Another beta particle and gamma ray later, you have U-234. This is using only the main branches for the estimate, which is going to throw the numbers off some. I get 5.88 * 10^6 decays per second from a mole of U-238. Starting with pure U-238 and nothing else, obviously U-238 is the only source of radiation. Each decay produces a nucleus of Th-234. Obviously new nuclei of Th-234 come from other U-238 that didn't decay. The decay constant of U-238 that I estimate from formula is 9.77 * 10^-18. There's a lot more where the Th-234 came from. We're not going to see a significant decrease in production of Th-234 in the next few years. Again, starting with pure U-238, Th-234 will build up until there is enough of it that its own decay will equal production. When the number of atoms times the decay constant of Th-234 equals 5.88 times 10^6, then the decay of the Th-234 is in equilibrium with the decay of a mole of uranium. It cannot decay any faster than the uranium does because it cannot decay any faster than it is produced. I get about 9.53 *10^12 nuclei. Computing the time it takes involves using a power series, and I'm not up for it today. In one second, 5.88 * 10^6 Th-234 are formed, and the odds of even one decaying are less than even because the decay constant is less than the number of nuclei. After ten seconds you can start talking about one to two Th-234 nuclei decaying, and after a hundred seconds, it's pretty close to 36 decays of Th-234 per second. That's the decay constant times the current supply of Th-234. That decay constant, by the way, is 6.17 * 10^-7. In the beginning, the production of Th-234 outnumbers the number of decays (or you could call it conversions) about a million to one. In a thousand seconds, you have about 362 conversions for the 5.88 E6 produced, and the ratio is already down to 16200 to 1. After 10 thousand seconds, it's down to 1620 to 1. When you reach that magic number of Th-234 nuclei, production equals loss. That's equilibrium. The magic number of Pa-234 is a lot less because of its shorter half-life. Again, it's the number of atoms times the decay constant. Since we're looking for the number of atoms, divide the number of decays we want by the decay constant. I get a decay constant of 5.92 * 10^-5 and 9.93 * 10^10 nuclei of Pa-234. After that it is U-234 which has a half-life of 245,000 years, so it will take it a long time to reach equilibrium. It's a lot easier to calculate how many nuclei per mole of U-238 it takes to reach equilibrium than it is to get the exact time. It takes about 1.62 million seconds to produce the right number of Th-234, but a lot have decayed in that time also. Each element that reaches equilibrium decays just about as often as the U-238 that produces it. If you don't believe me, maybe you will believe these sources: Florida State University The Open University The reasons that this phenomenon can continue to increase radioactivity for some time include the fact that each year, about one over 9 billion of the U-238 is actually converted. A half-life of 247,000 years for U-234 means that its activity is about 18000 times that of U-238 and it takes the conversion of 1/18000 of the U-238 to reach the equilibrium state. This is close to what is found in nature, according to the EPA about .0055 percent. That's the one that takes the most U-238 and the most patience. What you will wind up with is a one on one correspondence with the decay of U-238 and these daughter isotopes. The U-238 sets the basic rate and the daughters multiply that rate. It's called "secular equilibrium." You're going to see the first plateau of equilibrium by the time six months have passed. The next plateau is reached after several million years. We don't have to worry about that too much.

"In My Memory": Actually, PETA obtained the animals mentioned in the article by making firm promises to place those animals in homes.

The people of lesser military status who were convicted of the abuses of Abu Ghraib said that they were ordered to by superior officers. None of the superiors were convicted that I know of. This isn't fair and it isn't honorable. Honorable officers would take responsibility for the carrying out of their own orders to the point of placing their careers on the line by demanding to be prosecuted either with or before their subordinates are.

I've seen a few that claim that the radioactivity of DU increases over time. I've seen it enough times, and yes, antiNarcism does concur, within this discussion thread. In fact, I think that almost every anti-DU site claims that DU increases in radioactivity over time. I haven't even started on the chain down from the U-234 that DU already contains. U-234 decays 18,400 times as fast as U-238. If we actually could start with pure U-238, every atom that decays has better than a 99 percent chance of decaying again, twice, in less than six months. To say it another way, better than 99 percent of the U-238 that does decay will decay twice more in less than six months. I'm beginning to repeat myself here, but it takes 7 half-lives to reduce the quantity of a radioactive element to 1/128 of its original volume, leaving less than 1 percent or you could say getting rid of better than 99 percent. The half-life of Th-234 is 24.1 days. 7 times 24.1 days is 168.7 days, almost twelve days less than six 30 day months. It decays to Pa-234, with a half-life of 6.75 hours. 20 half-lives of Pa-234 equals 135 hours, less than a week. More than 99 percent of any quantity of Th-234 that is six months old or older will have gone through those two conversions. In this case, when we say that the probability is 99 percent that Th-234 converts to U-234 within six months, we also say that 99 percent of that Th-234 has emitted two beta rays and two gamma rays within six months after it was created by the decay of U-238. Equilibrium with Th-234 will be reached when enough of the Th-234 has aged so that it decays as fast as it is produced. By definition this means that it disintegrates as often as the U-238 it is produced from disintegrates. Equilibrium between Th-234 and Pa-234 will be achieved within a much shorter time, so there will not be much delay from the time that Th-234 is disintegrating as fast as it is produced to the time that Pa-234 is disintegrating as fast as it is produced, and as fast as the Th-234 is produced. It will take me a little time to compute just how long it takes to reach this equilibrium, but it will take less than six months.

For any quantity of U-238 that experiences alpha decay, there are actually about 7 half-lives of Th-234 before 99 percent of that has decayed to U-234. I am only doing the "main branch". U-238 to Th-234, one alpha and one gamma. Th-234 to Pa-234, one beta and one gamma. Pa-234 to U-234, one beta and one gamma. The U-234 is a plateau of relative stability because it has a long half-life, 245,000 years give or take. When I wrote this up yesterday, I said that the sum of the alpha and beta emissions triples after a time, and the gamma emissions triple over time. This is because there is essentially a one on one correspondence between the disintegrations of the U-238 and its daughter products. It can work this way because in a mass of U-238 that is newly refined, you have some billions of disintegrations per second. The back of the envelope calculations may give too long a time for the radioactivity to increase, too. Actually, this is the contribution from the mass of atoms that are U-238 in DU. I haven't worked this out for the U-234 and U-235 that it comes with, and these are still substantial contributors.

LEDs have resistance. The resistance varies in such a way that the LED has a more or less constant voltage across it even when the current varies. The trouble with that is that the LED's resistance will drop the more current you put into it. Hook it up to a power supply that can deliver the current without a resistor and it will burn up. This is actually a good thing because it makes the current usage very predictable when you use a resistor. You can make the LED brighter or dimmer over a very wide range without having to change the power supply. This also lets you save power. You can cut the LED current, using a resistor, to a level that lets a 9 volt battery last for a long time. Unlike incandescent bulbs, they don't seem to change color when you change the current. I've built an illuminator using six white LEDs that is easy to read by, using about 5 milliamps of current from a 9 volt battery.

I don't see a problem with that. I'm not all that certain that peer review makes better science. I'm really certain that scientific literacy needs to be more common, in a more "hands-on" way, and that the word of authority is always suspect. It costs nothing for us to be polite with each other, and I for one find it more enjoyable. Is there anything wrong with the information that I quoted from IEER?

Here's one It must be the percentage of U-234 removed that actually reduces the radioactivity of DU. Here is a chart. When I run the numbers myself, I get something that looks like 90 percent or better, but I will go with their 49 percent until I get better information. You've got to read charts like that carefully too, because the half-life that this source gives for U-235 has more digits to the left of the decimal point. The convention for scientific notation is one digit to the left of the decimal point. Their figure for U-234 in DU is 0.0008976%. According to my calculations, U-234 experienses about 18400 times as many disintegrations per second as does U-238. 18400 times .00000898 equals .16 so this might well be where most of the radioactivity has been removed. It also explains DU being roughly 60 percent as radioactive as the original. It's definitely a puzzle to try to figure it out when someone seems to be telling me that the removal of U-235 decreases the radioactivity significantly. U-235 is about 7 times as radioactive as U-238 and accounts for at most 1/140 of the mass in natural uranium. Again looking at the decay charts, it does look like any sample of DU will increase in radioactivity over time. I simply don't have time today to try to figure out how much. It probably took some geniuses weeks to figure that out. Obviously U-234 isn't going to be created any faster than U-238 decays. And I'm going to have to see if I can find better equations for yearly production because I think when you use an equation like the one on Thinkquest, you have to take "e" to the power of to get it right. About 2 tenths of a billionth of the mass of U-238 turns into U-234 in a year, and that radiates 18,400 times as many alpha particles as U-238. There are two intermediate isotopes that each emit a beta, that's like one click of alpha followed by two clicks of beta for each U-238 disintegration. Every stage, according to the source I linked to, is also accompanied by a gamma ray. There are two major plateaus followed by a third. The first and second are Th-234 and Pa-234, with half lives of 24.5 days and 1.17 minutes respectively. Essentially, this is one plateau because the second beta disintegration takes a much shorter time than the first, to reach U-234. Some equilibrium point is reached where these two go "click-click" as often as a U-238 nucleus disintegrates. After that particular time, your sample of DU has three times the gamma ray activity that U-238 does. In ten half lives the remaining unexpired nuclei number 1/1024, or about .000977 of the original, so it should be safe to say that parity is reached before ten half lives. I realize that this adds up to about 180 percent of the activity of natural uranium, so this is subject to modification by better information and better calculations. Once again, most of the concern is about the ability of DU rounds to put millions of tiny particles of DU into people's bodies through their lungs. The effect per mass of uranium is magnified tremendously and you have the daughter products for icing on a pretty nasty cake. One sample of a few micrograms is nasty, maybe enough to cause measurable radiation burning. Did anyone ever do a series of tests using cell cultures? The other concern, which I still consider significant, is that these big pieces could be forming some nasties just inside where they are shielded from view. According to some observers the radioactivity is way way high when the shielding is blown apart. Of course, it's also going to be hellaciously high when smoke is hanging in the air because it is all exposed.

You can't get away from the use of resistors. Trying not to use resistors means that your LEDs will face unpredictable currents. Then they won't last as long, could burn out, could catch fire. It isn't safe and it isn't that desirable. It's also a lot easier to just put a resistor on the line than to try to use regulators, which are just another form of resistor anyway.

I get the impression that someone a few hundred years ago had his own Jerry Falwell.

Some oxides of iron are magnetic. Magnetite can be created by bacteria or chemical action.

Maybe later today I will try to understand all of Uranium's decay modes. It gives off some X-rays which are obviously vulnerable to the self-shielding effect. One of my points here was that any significant thickness of uranium blocks alpha particles. Any counter measurements would measure tremendously fewer alpha particles than are produced. You even have the effect of the distance of your detector from most of the surface of the item that you are measuring. AntiNarcism deserves credit for bringing in the fact that alpha particles don't affect atoms and molecules on a one on one basis. They affect every atom and molecule that is close enough to their path. Those vapor trails they leave in a cloud chamber are huge compared to a cell nucleus. A millionth of a gram-atomic weight of U-238 weighs about 238 micrograms, right? And that's 6.022 * 10^17 atoms. One half of these disintegrate per 4.5 * 10^9 years. In that many years are 9.86 * 10^16 seconds. Thinkquest says that this is the way to calculate the decay constant: I get around 8.5 alpha disintegrations per second from a millionth of a gram-atomic weight of U-238. This doesn't sound like very much but the impact of these disintegrations takes place in just a few milligrams of flesh. In such small particulates, there is no self-shielding effect, and the dose is delivered at less than point-blank range. Most of the controversy is about inhaled uranium. Since it is inhaled in the form of smoke, it is in the form of very small particulates.

It's hard enough to get out of a little town in Kansas. They don't kill you, they just make you wish you were dead. Or so I'm told, anyway. A man is marked as some kind of "faggot", he lives the rest of his life in hell.

Use a resistor. LEDs will draw current until either their voltage drop equals the supply voltage, or they burn out. The power supply you are hooking this up to can run as high as 5.35 or so actual, and your LEDs together may only drop 4.2 volts. For the worst case the voltage difference is about 1.25. If you want 20 milliamps max, use 50 ohms per volt. I think Radio Shack has something like a 68 ohm resistor, but if you have a 100 or a 120 ohm resistor, I think you'll find that the LEDs shine brightly enough using that.

On several issues, this one included, I rarely find that either the mainstream side or the dissident side ever debates the actual merits of a case. The mainstream side is just as likely to become disruptive and even childish and abusive, and I'm glad to see that this is not happening in this case. Anti, please settle down. I know what some of the people who you have argued with are like. When someone is trying to be civil, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LET HIM. It is a precious thing. Don't make him change his mind. We actually had a discussion going. I don't think we do anymore. You, Anti, have failed to help your case. Even if God and the truth are on your side, you can afford to be civil. If you can't afford to be civil, you probably don't have the case you thought you did. Now, to try to get this back on topic, I was going to point out that small particles of uranium are going to release much more alpha radiation, a fair amount more X-rays, and some more gamma rays into the surroundings because at some size, uranium loses its self-shielding completely. With alpha, less than a millimeter of uranium blocks it, so we gain at least ten to a hundred times the exposure over bare uranium, and a hell of a lot over clad uranium. This is significant. So is the fact that almost all of the alpha buries itself in a few cubic millimeters of tissue, ionization trails and all. What does all this pump it up to, about a million times the exposure for that tissue surrounding a grain of DU that weighs a few hundred micrograms to a few milligrams? One thing about producing weapons grade plutonium for the U.S. government, in reference to the article about producing plutonium from CANDU reactors, is that the U.S. government produced tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. They were looking for a much larger quantity from each of a few reactors than would be needed to build two or three. A hundred pounds of plutonium is a lot easier to make than tens of thousands of pounds. I almost hate to say it, but two or three nuclear weapons are only good for making a country or two very, very angry. They are militarily useful only for committing suicide or for provoking one nation to destroy another.