FAQ - silver and indium for neutron activation - where to buy

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Richard Hull
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FAQ - silver and indium for neutron activation - where to buy

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999 silver and indium are the lower cost activation materials. For those without a metal rolling mill, these two suppliers are where I got my activation metals many years ago and they are still here on the web.

Rio Grande Jewelry supply (silver)

https://www.riogrande.com/

They offer 30 gauge sheet, .012-inch thick in 6" wide sheet by what ever length in inches that you like. part number 101930 (2020 info)

Rotometals (indium)

https://www.rotometals.com/

You can by a 1 ounce ingot or disc from them. It is soft enough to pound out to sheet between two pieces of smooth leather on a hard surface. (makes lead look like hardened armor plate)
Indium is one of my favorite metals for other than activation. It melts at 150 deg c., will not boil until 2000 deg C., (throw off deadly vapors from the melt) The MSDS sheet is virtually blank.
Totally non-toxic.

Fun extra facts I love as I work with all these metals....

Bismuth, which Rotometals sells, is equally safe and you gulp this heavy metal down with every spoon full of Peptobismal. To this day, no one can medically explain the calming action of Bismuth on the gut.
Bismuth is one of those rare elements that has only one natural isotope. (Bi209). Bismuth has a low melting point as well. It is the most diamagnetic of all metallic elements. Bismuth metal is radioactive giving off alpha particles, decaying to an isotope of Thallium. However, Bismuth's radioactive half-life is on the order of 19 exayears, (1X10e19 years), 19 quintillion years. That is 10 billion times the age of the entire Universe since the big bang and you still have half left over! Get it before it is all decayed! Note: the half life is only known to about +/- 10% or to within +/- a billion times the age of the universe....give or take.

Tin is also sold by Rotometals and is another low melting point metal. It is interesting because it contains more stable isotopes in it than any other element. The metal, tin, has ten-(10) stable isotopes in it!

Blocking metal, long known and used by machinists to machine all manner of crazy shapes, prior to three axis CNC, often contains, bismuth and tin as part of its composition. It melts in boiling water.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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