Tritiums

I was wondering where I can purchase small tritiums iin different colours to attach to my Wee? The ones sold at lummi are good but I was wondering whether there are other colours and cheaper ones around?

if you live in the US then ur outta luck...

they are only available for military and disaster safety applications (illegal otherwise) in the US. but if not, then i think DX has some, not sure about the quality though

I've seen these in white, green and yellow; http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.6830
hope that helps.

Merkava sells some in the marketplace. There are others who sell them from time to time as well. B@rt does a tritium groupbuy sometimes.

Tritium is PERFECTLY LEGAL in the US, there is just a specific density that above which requires permits to sell. A tritium vial or 30 contains no where near enough material to be of any legal concern.

Good Luck

Have you looked at the Merkava threads in CPFMarketplace?

Here or here

Have a look through the various threads to see if there is something that suits you.


it seems I was late.....while I was still searching PhPh was already there.

the DX ones are too big.

kilivolt, i think the ones sold by merkava do fit, but it seems there is only 1 colour. btw, why are these things so expensive? :sick2:

ruriimasu said:

why are these things so expensive? :sick2:

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This is in short the manufacturing process: you make a thin glass tube and spray the inside of it with a colored phosphorous compound; when the vial is ready you make vacuum in it and fill it with H3 gas, then seal the end.
That's why they are expensive.

Tritium vials

:wave:

oh.. i see. so its price was not jacked up

The DX ones come in 3 different sizes. The smallest is pretty small.

this place also has some interesting stuff if you want to do it yourself; http://www.glopaint.com/glowpaint.htm
check out the Litroenergy stuff!

Marduke said:

The DX ones come in 3 different sizes. The smallest is pretty small.

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hi marduke, i may have missed out some.. but all i had been able to find are those 1.5inch types. i am looking for something for my Wee, maybe 6mm x 1.5mm at most?

Tritium is also one of the most expensive substances on the planet. Like $20,000/gram. It's only made in a few nuclear reactors, in small trace quantities. IIRC you only get a single atom of tritium from a nuclear transmutation of a lithium atom bombarded with a neutron. Literally made atom-by-atom.

Actually I worked it out and if the $2/Ci price I Googled is accurate, that's only $2.40/vial for a 1.2Ci, but still, there's a lot of safety concerns, a HUGE concern about just the cost of leaking even milliliters of tritium with your machinery let alone environmental laws. So it would need to be an advanced facility. Tritium is not easily purchased or produced, so China's not going to be making cheap ones anytime soon. Not unless they suddenly make a tritium superreactor and start turning out a surplus.

$20 for an imported 1" keychain-ready vial that will glow for over a decade is expensive? Sheesh you guys are hard to please :duh2:

I love my Merkava!

StarHalo said:

$20 for an imported 1" keychain-ready vial that will glow for over a decade is expensive? Sheesh you guys are hard to please :duh2:

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Perhaps think of it as $2 per year

StarHalo said:

$20 for an imported 1" keychain-ready vial that will glow for over a decade is expensive? Sheesh you guys are hard to please :duh2:

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Those vials come sealed in glass tubes right? What will happen if they break?

richardcpf said:

Those vials come sealed in glass tubes right? What will happen if they break?

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Nothing at all!! There is not enough nuclear isotopes in those viles to affect anything.
100 of the large ones at once, MAYBE, but alone they are harmless.

I jumped right on the tritium sights bandwagon in the '80's and asked a LOT of these questions then!

richardcpf said:

Those vials come sealed in glass tubes right? What will happen if they break?

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It's actually a glass tube that's suspended within another plastic tube that has epoxy applied to the ends to act as a shock absorber. It'd require some pretty serious abuse before it broke.

Should it break: The actual radioactive component in the vial is an isotope of hydrogen, which is much lighter than air; the tiny amount gas would immediately disperse and float away. Even if you were standing directly over a freshly broken vial, odds are the gas would be too dispersed for even a single molecule to reach your breathing space. If the vial were in your hand or pocket - again, it's a radioactive gas and not solid or fluid, it would simply float off and away, no more glow from your vial.

Worst case scenario: You break the vial on a table/desk, then IMMEDIATELY cup your hands around the vial and place your face directly over it and inhale deeply. If this were to happen, you'd receive as much radiation as ...a dental x-ray.

That's the beauty of the tritium vial design, rather than relying on the radioactive substance itself to glow, it uses a strong phosphor that glows brightly with very little energy, so you can use a remarkably weak source of radioactivity to produce a glow. The beta radiation that comes off of a tritium vial cannot penetrate tissue paper, and can only make it about a quarter inch from the vial in open air before dissipating. It's so weak that even if you were to set a Geiger Counter on its most sensitive setting, then press the probe directly onto the vial, it would not register a reading at all.