sorgatz@ttidca.TTI.COM ( Avatar) (10/08/87)
Summary:VERRRY dangerous! Keywords:Don't bother trying this at home! > In article <3981@ecsvax.UUCP> dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) writes: > >substitute proposed was uranium-238 hexafluoride, which is quite dense, > >but I'm not sure it's nontoxic. (a lot of other people are also unsure of the compound, comments deleted) A little reading on this goes a long way; the book 'Laurence and Oppenheimer' mentions the gas diffusion seperation process for Uranium, hetro isotopic Uranium is dissolved into fluoric-acid and then reacted into a dry gas, i.e. Uranium Hexafluoride. This stuff is, according to the book, so hateful that it will eat thru almost anything! The gaseous diffusion seperation process required Dow-Corning development of special ceramics that would not be so affected and yet maintain the small pass-hole/sintered structure that is essential to the process of isotope seperation. The gas will eat stainless steel, glass, quartz and most common-clay ceramics, as well as the entire chain of lesser metals and most alloys. Some of the exotic alloys can be used to contain it, but are quite expensive and do not generally lend them- selves to the pass-hole/sintering needed to manufacture the gas diffusion plates. Additionally, U238 is a metal poison; clearly this gas is not a viable choice for *any* breathing mixture! -- -Avatar-> (aka: Erik K. Sorgatz) KB6LUY +-------------------------+ Citicorp(+)TTI *----------> panic trap; type = N+1 * 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 450-9111, ext. 2973 +-------------------------+ Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun,philabs,randvax,trwrb}!ttidca!ttidcb!sorgatz **