Radioactive Vacuum Tubes

let us begin with some spark gap tubes all of these contain cesium 137 which has a half-life of about 30 years at least one half-life has passed since they were manufactured probably even two although most of the initial activity has decayed some of these are still a little bit radioactive with this one you can see what i believe might be radiation damage on the glass right where i get the highest reading the material might be deposited in this hole so this one has a similar pattern on the glass but this time it gives a pretty consistent reading all around the tube so this is a very interesting tube here the material is deposited directly on the inside of the glass because the material is concentrated in one spot and a radiation detector can get closer to it a higher reading can be obtained this way but the activity is probably similar to the other tubes in order to confirm the presence of cesium 137 one can perform gamma spectroscopy on the tubes here is a quick spectrum i took with a 63 by 63 millimeter sodium iodine doped with allium detector krypton 85 is a radioactive gas with a half-life of about 11 years it was used in some electron tubes such as this one because of a short half-life almost all activity has decayed at this point gamma spectroscopy is more difficult here because of a lower activity and less gamma emissions i have seen it performed on these types of tubes before but i have not tried it yet these next tubes are also interesting they are a couple of the few variants that contain carbon 14. carbon 14 has a half-life of about 5 700 years so most of the activity is still present the carbon-14 emits kind of weak betas that might not make their way through the internal metal structures of this tube or the glass depending on where the material is deposited do this tube was partially made with uranium glass as such it is slightly radioactive so it also fluoresces nicely under uv light nickel 63 is a weak beta emitter with a 101 year half-life this russian tube contains nickel 63 which i can't really detect the weak betas are mostly blocked before reaching my geiger tube this surge protector also contains nickel 63 like before i'm unable to detect anything from the outside disassembled one can apparently detect something this incredible book serves as my main source for figuring out which tubes are radioactive i've left some other sources in the description fluorescent lamps like this one often contain a small amount of radioactive material sometimes it's tritium but this one contains promethium 147 with a short half-life of 2.6 years and a low beta radiation energy what little is left can't be detected although not really a tube i would like to mention the spark plug allegedly these contain polonium 210 which firestone claimed was superior to your regular plane spark plugs having a half-life of only 137 days the polonium-210 is long gone so it's not radioactive today lastly i would like to mention some tubes that i don't own but are pretty interesting first is the notorious 1b22 tube which contains radium it's pretty radioactive but always out of stock or too expensive when i look for it next are different types of tubes used in radar systems or similar these apparently often contain cobalt 60 which has a five-year half-life and therefore it's almost completely decayed by no and that concludes this video thank you for your attention

Channel: AE Laboratories

Views: 21,565

Keywords: vacuum tube, electron tube, electron tubes, vacuum tubes, radioactive, radioactive tubes, radioactive vacuum tubes, radioactive electron tubes, TG-30, TG-57, tubes, spark gap tube

Id: m-6-aJv7GCI

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 24 2022