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Re: Depleted Uranium SG

Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

At 12:05 PM 10/1/2005, Tesla list wrote: 
Original poster: Mddeming@xxxxxxx
Hi Mike,

In a message dated 10/1/05 9:43:56 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
Original poster: "Mike" <mailto:mike.marcum@xxxxxxxxxxxx>mike.marcum@xxxxxxxxxxxx


This is probably the stupidest idea yet,

Close, but no trophy  :-))))
but has anyone thought of
using depleted uranium for sparkgap electrodes?

Depleted uranium is still radioactive and oxides are not good to inhale.

While it's technically radioactive, the halflife is so huge (4.5 billion years), that not much of it decays in any given amount of time. In fact, since nothing on earth "makes" U238, what you got today is whatever there was at the original condensation, reduced by a factor of 4 or so..(depending on when you want to start counting). There's actually quite a lot of U already around (it's substantially more common than gold, for instance)

heavy metal toxicity would be the real problem.


Figured if it was one
of the heaviest stable elements in the periodic table it won't
melt/corrode as easily as tungsten at high power.

density or atomic numbers don't necessarily correlate with stability. That's more a function of which column they're in in the periodic table, which in turn has to do with how many electrons are in the outer shell. Elements that are missing one electron (i.e. halogens) or have just one electron in the outer shell (e.g. Hydrogen, etc.) tend to be the more reactive ones (they 'want to fill' or 'lose just one')


High Weight<> high melting point. Lead and gold - very stable and very high M.Wt. but low melting point. 


gold has a fairly high Melting point, as does U.


Does it have crappy
RF properties like steel?

Yes