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So, thulium uses in portable x-ray machines

Active component of the instrument is a tiny particle (one-fifth gram) of thulium-170 which has been made radioactive in a heavy water nuclear reactor at Arco, Idaho.

Hmm, so unless there are millions of these machines around there’s no grand market for thulium to stick into rectors then…..

17 thoughts on “So, thulium uses in portable x-ray machines”

  1. no grand market for thulium to stick into rectors then…..

    There’s no telling in today’s CofE what you can stick into rectors

  2. Medical portable & mobile X-ray machines use electric power to generate radiation in vacuum tubes. These evidently need a power supply and are bulky and heavy.

    Using a radioactive particle would make a smaller lighter unit without need of a power supply, so most likely industrial use – limited market.

  3. It’s useful in the engineering industrially where portability and being the right type of “source” is necessary. One big downside is that thulium-170 has a half life of 128 days, so after a year you would have less than 14% of the isotope remaining.

  4. There’s no telling in today’s CofE what you can stick into rectors

    And, indeed, what rectors stick themselves into. I recall a recent story (sorry I can’t immediately find the link) of a vicar discovered wearing only women’s stockings with his dick plugged into the nozzle of a Happy Hoover.

  5. I have never heard of thulium. How can that be? “Thulium is a lanthanide element”: ah, I’ve never bothered to distinguish them from each other. Shame!

  6. Dennis, Legend of the Parish

    There’s no telling in today’s CofE what you can stick into rectors

    You beat me to it.

  7. @asiaseen: A Henry vacuum cleaner.

    I won’t put a URL in as moderation seems to dump my posts when I do that, just say look at @NoContextBrits on Twitter or the original story in the Indy yesterday.

  8. John B
    July 16, 2022 at 10:36 am

    Medical portable & mobile X-ray machines use electric power to generate radiation in vacuum tubes. These evidently need a power supply and are bulky and heavy.

    Using a radioactive particle would make a smaller lighter unit without need of a power supply, so most likely industrial use – limited market.

    Doubly so as such a thing would need to be tightly regulated and tracked – lest it end up in a landfill in a third world country and people die.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

  9. The radioactive pill may be small and light but the depleted uranium box it needs to be kept in when not in use definitely isn’t.

  10. Iridium 192, the commonest industrial radioisotope, has a half life of 74 days, from memory. So 128 days is an improvement on this metric. Is the source small enough to use close to the site of interest? Does it matter that its emissions are a mix of X and gamma? No idea. But standard industrial x ray machines aren’t that heavy, can be carried by one man.
    So I have a suspicion that the market may be limited and the thulium is a by product of some other more lucrative process.

  11. Given the short half-life, presumably the thulium specks will need to be replaces fairly regularly, so it could be a small but ongoing market…

  12. The Pedant-General

    Diogenes

    “Does the brand make a difference”

    Not really: “plugged into the nozzle of a Happy Hoover”
    It only matters if it was happy or not 🙂

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