now when you read about polonium 210 its says its a powerful emitter of alpha radiation

one thing i can’t find is if this radiation is powerful enough to react with a gas/material so that excitation occurs and when the electron jumps back to a lower orbit if a visible radiation will be produced that would be enough to create a strong ight source

polonium 210 is used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators but these are sources of heat, you can get some amazing power output from a lump 2 inches square of say 140kw!! a square of polinium would actually get hot which wouldn’t be good if you wanted to keep it contained (at anything above 50 deg it starts vaporising – bad), they tend to spread the fuel source and cool it in that case if necessary.

it would be good to see if polonium 210 could be used for a light source rather than a heat source that is the alpha radiation can excite a substance and then produce visible light as it jumps down a few orbits.

tritium light sources excite a phosphor surface which then produces visible light

it would be nice to see if polonium could do the same

tritium has a much longer half life, whereas polonium has a half of 138 days i think which means its spent half of its useful energy in a short time

wookiemeister said:

tritium light sources excite a phosphor surface which then produces visible light

it would be nice to see if polonium could do the same

tritium has a much longer half life, whereas polonium has a half of 138 days i think which means its spent half of its useful energy in a short time

No. Alpha particles are ³He nuclei; tritium decays by beta radiation, which means it emits an electron (in ³H’s case the energy is between about 6 and 18 keV.) Phosphorescent materials produce light by electron capture (it’s more complicated than that, but that’s basically it.)

Pu won’t do the same as ³H. Pu is also extremely toxic, while ³H is not so toxic.

Wocky said:

wookiemeister said:

tritium light sources excite a phosphor surface which then produces visible light

it would be nice to see if polonium could do the same

tritium has a much longer half life, whereas polonium has a half of 138 days i think which means its spent half of its useful energy in a short time

No. Alpha particles are ³He nuclei; tritium decays by beta radiation, which means it emits an electron (in ³H’s case the energy is between about 6 and 18 keV.) Phosphorescent materials produce light by electron capture (it’s more complicated than that, but that’s basically it.)

Pu won’t do the same as ³H. Pu is also extremely toxic, while ³H is not so toxic.

so you need an electron to do this rather than helium nucleus.

it would explain why they opted for heat generation from polonium (Po not Pu)

perhaps you could generate energy by virtue of the ionisation of gas by the alpha source (like a geiger counter on steroids)????

polonium is an easily available radioactive source.

apart from heat generation there would have to be some way of harnessing the energy of the helium nucleus other than heat??

Wocky said:

wookiemeister said:

tritium light sources excite a phosphor surface which then produces visible light

it would be nice to see if polonium could do the same

tritium has a much longer half life, whereas polonium has a half of 138 days i think which means its spent half of its useful energy in a short time

No. Alpha particles are ³He nuclei; tritium decays by beta radiation, which means it emits an electron (in ³H’s case the energy is between about 6 and 18 keV.) Phosphorescent materials produce light by electron capture (it’s more complicated than that, but that’s basically it.)

Pu won’t do the same as ³H. Pu is also extremely toxic, while ³H is not so toxic.

it would seem that alpha sources can be used in the way i’ve described after all

www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/RT/2005/RP/RPV-bailey1.html