From: Wm. Scott Smith > I'm not a nuclear physicist, but I have long-wondered: If U238 >>>Plutonium, then mightn't Bismuth tend to go to Polonium---which is really nasty stuff and highly radioactive---many thousands of times more radioactive than Plutonium.
Bismuth has an extremely low cross-section for neutrons. It is a strange metal, perhaps the strangest element in the periodic table. The 126 neutrons is a "magic number" and the metal "should" make an excellent coolant for a nuclear reactor, since it does not absorb neutrons easily, but there are "problems" that have prevented that - curiously related to plumbing. Here is an old thread on vortex. (whatever happened to Richard M, anyone know ?) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg01281.html As noted - there is/was a "UFO connection" to Bismuth but that may have been debunked by now. It is also found in high temp superconductors, and thermoelectrics, and dielectrics. What a trifecta. For another instance of weirdness, even though the 209 isotope is listed in some references as 100%, the metal is slightly radioactive. 209Bi is technically in the category of four-nines (99.99).The reason for this is not clear, and some would say it is due to trace isotopes of another element, but it is easy to test a "pure" sample of bismuth and see a significant count above background. In fact my Oxford reference data, it does list three bismuth isotopes as "trace" - 210, 212, and 214. But given the short half life of all of them, there must be a mechanism to replenish them, or else there should not even be the trace. Given the lore, I would love to see some results in a LENR setup. Jones Now for a bit of PS humor wrt an old message : * . Professor Ron Mallet [snip] who intends on using circulating laser beams hopes to receive messages from the future ... I have written him without reply . * FR: I have also had trouble getting him to respond--- Guys - did you look in your old email folder? <g> He may have responded using the laser beam system to get into cyberspace, and consequently, the response came back before you sent the question .
