Background radiation reciever

[sm0ky2]

How would we use the radiation for this Purpose?
And how do we get the energy back out?


I have access to a natural beta emitter
A pink granite containing neodymium
And small amounts of promethium trapped in corpuscles in the rock.
The stones glow in complete darkness, so there is quite of lot of beta


(If you play with this stuff, use gloves and don't touch your eyes)

[telecom]

It is already used:
A ceramic fuel pellet of Plutonium-238 oxide glows orange from its radioactive decay. These pellets are used inside Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) to provide heat that is converted into electricity on spacecraft.Sep 20, 2013

[sm0ky2]

It is already used:
A ceramic fuel pellet of Plutonium-238 oxide glows orange from its radioactive decay. These pellets are used inside Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) to provide heat that is converted into electricity on spacecraft.Sep 20, 2013

That's not quite the same thing as harnessing the zpe.


In fact, with pu238 you probably couldn't even detect the background radiation anywhere inside the chamber.


Unfortunately promethium is not "that radioactive"
It's half life is like 50-55 yrs or something.
(the stuff around me doesn't follow the halflife rule for another reason)


But, it's technically not illegal to own.
The mild betas I guess just cause 'sun burn' after prolonged exposure.
And it is warned to not get it in a cut or eye or anything that goes inside you.
Your digestive system can take more dmg but if it gets absorbed into a secondary
organ it's bad news.


Skin can take a lot of the radiation
(Do not try this with plutonium, uranium, iridium, or any of the available high-energy isotopes.)


Encapsulated promethium only occurs in two known forms.
Uranium ore, and this pink granite
It's not the same as raw promethium, which would still be nothing close to pu
But it's stable, meaning, it will still be emitting beta in another 10k yrs.


Nothing isn't going to heat up, well I mean I could initiate a thermochemical reaction with it if feel I really
needed to prove myself wrong, but it's 'mild' radiation? Technically "Secondary Radiation"
But that's more advanced level stuff most people don't really understand.


We will just say that the promethiums radiation hits other stuff and makes more (but less)
Radiation.....


Not much use for it except as a teaching tool to demonstrate electro molecular chemistry
As least that I have found so far.


Now, if I wanted to make a cheap and freely available and safe thermonuclear heat source
I would use Americum


Teeny teeny pieces are in every smoke detector
Collect broken ones for free
Hell sell the stupid things and people will pay you to replace them and give you their old ones
Find them in the trash, or the junkyard
Start a town wide smoke detector recycling program
Whatever
The stuff cannot mathematically "go critical"
It's perfectly safe in any quantities,Just don't get it on you

[telecom]

That's not quite the same thing as harnessing the zpe.


In fact, with pu238 you probably couldn't even detect the background radiation anywhere inside the chamber.


Unfortunately promethium is not "that radioactive"
It's half life is like 50-55 yrs or something.
(the stuff around me doesn't follow the halflife rule for another reason)


But, it's technically not illegal to own.
The mild betas I guess just cause 'sun burn' after prolonged exposure.
And it is warned to not get it in a cut or eye or anything that goes inside you.
Your digestive system can take more dmg but if it gets absorbed into a secondary
organ it's bad news.


Skin can take a lot of the radiation
(Do not try this with plutonium, uranium, iridium, or any of the available high-energy isotopes.)


Encapsulated promethium only occurs in two known forms.
Uranium ore, and this pink granite
It's not the same as raw promethium, which would still be nothing close to pu
But it's stable, meaning, it will still be emitting beta in another 10k yrs.


Nothing isn't going to heat up, well I mean I could initiate a thermochemical reaction with it if feel I really
needed to prove myself wrong, but it's 'mild' radiation? Technically "Secondary Radiation"
But that's more advanced level stuff most people don't really understand.


We will just say that the promethiums radiation hits other stuff and makes more (but less)
Radiation.....


Not much use for it except as a teaching tool to demonstrate electro molecular chemistry
As least that I have found so far.


Now, if I wanted to make a cheap and freely available and safe thermonuclear heat source
I would use Americum


Teeny teeny pieces are in every smoke detector
Collect broken ones for free
Hell sell the stupid things and people will pay you to replace them and give you their old ones
Find them in the trash, or the junkyard
Start a town wide smoke detector recycling program
Whatever
The stuff cannot mathematically "go critical"
It's perfectly safe in any quantities,Just don't get it on you

Plutonium 238 is an ideal transformer of cosmic rays into heat.
It is an alpha emitter and it absorbs into itself all the alpha particles, which make it so hot.

[sm0ky2]

Plutonium 238 is an ideal transformer of cosmic rays into heat.
It is an alpha emitter and it absorbs into itself all the alpha particles, which make it so hot.

Where did you get this from?


Yes pu238 will sometimes absorb its own He(4) emissions
and in the right arrangement can even extend the half-life of a sample
by raising its internal energy after it has decayed.
But all of the energy in these cases are accounted for.


If it randomly absorbed cosmic He(4), that would be evident in the math
which it is not.


There can be 'some' change in temperatures (mostly internal) by self-bombardment
But the heat from a thermo-reaction is caused by the particles bombarding a neutral source.
Such as the ceramic casing the Pu is put into.
Then it is simply ran through a Seebeck thermogenerator.


We can count the emissions, there aren't "extra particles", which would require a cosmic source.
The rare instance where a high energy He(4) from space were to strike our Pu sample
Is statistically improbable, and would be difficult to stage the event to even test this.
High-energy cosmic He(4) isn't that common in our surroundings.


Pu238 isn't "hot" all by itself.
To put this in perspective: a Pu sample by itself will sit around 600-700 degrees
While the ceramic in the radioisotope thermogenerator becomes heated to 1100


A well insulated device can get hotter than that over time,


Besides the obvious point that the Zpe is not 'cosmic rays'. It is the background radiation
Which is present when there are no cosmic rays.