Odd tritium question

[beach honda]

A general tritium question maybe someone could answer for me....

A few years back (before i was involved with flashlights and lighting in general), my friend had a capsule about the size and shape of something you would put into the vacuum tubes at the bank drive in. You could not open it, however as it was sealed on both ends. Its color in the daytime is opaque\grey\greenish. It look to be at least 10 years old at the time based on the amount of light it gave off. Definately had the radioactive symbol on it and the comapny logo had been etched off over the years but read something to the effect of "safety products". He had no idea where it came from or how old it was (he was known for getting his hands on curious artifacts) but it definately glowed from its own energy. i am thinking it was a tritium product, because of the glow and the radiation symbols, but i have yet to find another tritium capsule anywhere near its size. Can anyone shed some light on this....lol

-chris

 

[65535]

It was most likely tritium but it could have have been any alpha particle releasing gas or solid encased in clear plastic or glass and with a coating of phosphors on it. I doubt they would make anything of that size these days because if it was a gas that much gas could pose a health risk if it leaked.

 

[mikel81]

These guys found one too.:nana:

 

[Guy's Dropper]

Wow... Something that size would not be legal to transport, or even own... You should probably check with the NRC about that. They probably have a record of it going missing, assuming it is a tritium vial of such a huge size as the one you described.

 

[StarHalo]

I'd wager it was really good glow-in-the-dark material, if not, then the tritium was just in an exterior shell, with the center of the tube being hollow. This still isn't likely due to the price of tritium - a volume that size would hold many Curies, would require some sort of custom production method, etc, resulting in a prohibitively astronomical price, even for a showpiece.

I'm also not aware of the radioactive symbol being associated with tritium products. I'd check with B@rt and Merkava, but as far as I know, tritium containers/products aren't usually labeled at all.

 

[Daniel_sk]

Maybe a big vial from a warning sign or something similar like this:
http://www.orau.org/PTP/collection/radioluminescent/h3exitsignl.htm

 

[Bradlee]

I'm also not aware of the radioactive symbol being associated with tritium products. I'd check with B@rt and Merkava, but as far as I know, tritium containers/products aren't usually labeled at all.

I have a 2Ci source from a group buy a while back which is encased in plastic and has the radiation symbol on the back. It was manufactured by "safety light corp."- maybe that's the company the original poster was referring to?

Edited to add: Here's the back of my tritium vial. Does this look similar to the label you saw beach_honda? If so, maybe Safety Light Corp. was the manufacturer.

 

[Oznog]

How certain are you of that tube size? Memories of stuff you saw once "a few years back" are often distorted.

I suspect it wouldn't even make sense to be that large. I'm not sure the surface phosphor glow gets that much brighter from greater depths of tritium and tritium costs far more than gold. If that's the case then they'd limit the diameter and simply use more tubes to make more light.

I saw an eBay auction before the crackdowns for a "tritium marker" much larger than your standard keychain, but not nearly as big as you describe IIRC. Even then, it was quite a few years old and thus had lost a substantial amount of intensity.

Hey, holy crap I didn't know about these:
http://www.goodmart.com/products/1000620.htm

3.75" long tritium tubes? Kick ***!

 

[AvidHiker]

Given the size you're suggesting, I would guess that it was intended as some sort of emergency marker (along the lines of what oznog just posted - tubes of this size are not uncommon in safety products like exit signs and emergency markers). Not sure of the regulations, but AFAIK a rad symbol is also not unusual for products containing significant amounts of tritium.

Also, I'm not sure that the size of the device would necessarily correlate so obviously with the amount of tritium it contained. Tritium vials of similar size can contain substantially different amounts of tritium. Depending on the application, the manufacturer will pressurize the vial with tritium gas to give the desired light output. I think B@rt's recent TiGlow offering used "high pressure" vials, they are relatively small but give off a lot of light since they contain tritium under pressure which adds up to at least one curie of tritium in each vial. They are also quite expensive compared with other glowrings which use similar size vials (like Merkava's) - for B@rt's TiGlow, I believe the cost of the vial alone was well over half the total cost (I know because I broke one and he was kind enough to sell me a replacement vial).

 

[mikel81]

What about tritium runway lights? I remember reading about it somewhere.

Did a search and found this link. Looks like they did testing in using tritium for runway markers. Maybe it was left over from the testing?

http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA114558