FA: half-inch pure Lead slugs

LioNiNoiL_a t_Y a h 0 0_d 0 t_c 0 m wrote in news:Oq5md.121389$cJ3.38337@fed1read06:

Just looked at the auction. Can you tell me what the slugs are made of?

What would you do with them? You are asking about 6 times the going price for pure lead pigs and 30 times the price of scrap lead.

in

Yep, you'd have to want them pretty badly to pay the price---especially factoring in shipping charges. Lead doesn't usually command $12.00/lb.

Harold

Hey, Glenn -- Give him a break! It's Ebay for crissake. Just be quiet and let him rip the suckers that don't know any better. He hopes you are stupid enough to buy his lead for your keel -- at his exorbitant prices.

Bob Swinney

I would pay a couple of bucks a pound for some of that spent uranium we sprayed around Kuwait but lead slugs are only good for ripping up New Jersey school roofs. :-)

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 19:48:02 -0500, "Glenn Ashmore" calmly ranted:

I wonder if that would keep the barnacle population down... Yeah, keels full of DU might keep you warmer on cold seagoing nights, too!

Anbody know the *actual* (not urban myth value) radiation level from DU?

Ted

yeh. except du isn't a real thing in itself, it's a waste product of technology whose composition varies. supposed to be mostly u238

half life of u258 is 4.5 x 10^9 years. alpha decay. that's pretty low, about

40 million alphas per kilo per second.

it won't keep you warm.

a couple of pounds nearby won't hurt you. just a little bit inside you may kill you tho.

a sheet of paper will stop the alpha radiation dead. the betas produced by the decay products aren't noticeably harmful in the quantities involved.

i wouldn't want to be close to more than a few pounds long-term 'tho.

getting close to a lot of du can happen in an abrams mbt tank, whose armour is made partly of du.

that's bad in another way too, because any slight irradiation, like a nuke going off not-so-nearby, and especially a neutron bomb, could make being in the tank afterwards quickly lethal. sometimes you'd be better off in the open air.

funny ole world.

only one finger working today,

me again.

it can happen in 747 airplanes too, which have nearly a ton of du in them.

as they fly up high where there is more radiation, they can get more radioactive too, but i don't know how much.

-snip-

-snip-

I believe that's entirely from heavy-metal toxicity, i.e. it's a chemical effect, not a radioactive one.

Same with Plutonium.

Not nearly enough radiation up there to induce radiation.

So where can Joe Average buy some?

Alan

What on earth for? I always thought the name of the game was to make airplanes *light*!

Ted

Yeah, me, too. Why would they add weight, and where?

Harold

Counterweights...Paul

Mass balancing ailerons and elevators to avoid flutter. Equal amount of weight in front of the hingeline (needs to be small and heavy) to balance out the weight and arm of the surfaces.

Even need to do this on small airplanes like the one I'm building. I'm planning to use plain old lead for my counterweights though.

Thanks, Bart. Years ago I produced tungsten weights for counterbalancing guidance system components. I bid on others that were made from a gold alloy, but was not successful with my bid. In both cases, the specific gravity is quite high, which likely accounts for the material selections.

Good luck with the project!

Harold

[...]

That's pretty much what I would have thought too, but they are replacing the weights from some aircraft with non-du weights for safety reasons, and apparently they do find increased levels of radiation relating to previous use at altitude, and some people think it is a matter for concern.

As I said though, I don't know the numbers.

There is also some talk about banning the use of du in aircraft, again for radiological safety, but I don't think it will come to much.

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 21:51:46 GMT, Ted Edwards calmly ranted:

Boy, you literalists. 'Twas a joke, boys and girls.

The last time I researched it, the Pros and Cons were about even with half a dozen sites saying "safe" and the other half saying "death". Kinda like politics, where neither party is right more than 10% of the time.

Trust the WHO?

From a slide show: has the text: UNSHIELDED 30MM DU PENETRATOR--- < 0.1 MREM/HR (WHOLE BODY AT 6") BACKGROUND RADIATION 350 MREM/YEAR SMOKING-- 125 MREM X # OF CIGARETTES/DAY PER YEAR TRANSPOLAR FLIGHT 10 MREM CHEST X-RAY 50 MREM GI SERIES X-RAY 650 MREM RADIATION WORKER ANNUAL SAFE ALLOWANCE 5,000 MREM/YEAR ESSENTIALLY NO ACUTE EFFECT