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Natural plutonium-containing mineral.
Plutonium is one of the most highly regulated substances in the world. So far as I am aware, there are no permitted industrial applications other than nuclear bombs and nuclear power reactors. Unlike, for example, americium, another man-made transuranic element, you cannot buy plutonium at Walmart.
There are several reasons for this. First, plutonium is widely viewed as almost unimaginably dangerous. It is in fact very dangerous, because it is powerfully radioactive, and because it is bone-seeking, which means once you get any in you it attaches itself permanently to your bones, where it sits around casually irradiating the bone marrow that is responsible for producing your blood cells.
But it's not quite as dangerous as many people seem to think. This article provides some perspective (though, for additional perspective, keep in mind that the article was published by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, the world's largest nuclear weapons research facility, which has a consistently pro-plutonium mind set).
Second there is the problem of criticality: If too much plutonium gets together in a compact form, a spontaneous chain reaction begins which results in a huge increase in the amount of radiation released, and if you have enough, a nuclear explosion. This has happened accidentally in storage pools in Russia, and it takes a surprisingly small amount of it to reach dangerous rates of fission.
Third there is the hyper-concern on the part of regulatory agencies that someone could gather enough plutonium to make a nuclear bomb or at least a "dirty bomb". People gathering up normal uranium are not much of a concern, because it's so incredibly difficult to enrich it to the point of being useful for making bombs. But plutonium doesn't need any enriching: It's ready to go right out of the discreet yet strangely heavy attache case passed through an unmarked doorway in a back alley of a forlorn city in Kyrgyzstan.
The sample I have representing plutonium is the naturally occurring mineral muromontite, which is a mixture of uranium and beryllium. Putting beryllium near uranium is generally considered a bad idea because the alpha particles from the decay of uranium are captured by the beryllium atoms, which in turn release neutrons. Neutrons are very unhealthy to be around.
In the case of this sample, however, the neutrons are in turn re-captured by the uranium, which then undergoes further decay and is transformed into plutonium. The result is that this mineral contains the highest known naturally occurring concentration of plutonium. (Yes, no doubt some of the neutrons escape. Gillian Pearce, the source of this sample, responds "a few neutrons never hurt anyone". I'm not sure I buy this theory of the harmlessness of neutrons in small numbers, so eventually I'll get it properly measured and quantified. In the mean time, it's in the Hot Box fat lot of good that would do against fast neutrons.)
If you try to look up the name "muromontite" you'll find only very spotty references. Gill explains as follows:Unfortunately you may not find muromontite for stupid bureaucratic reasons.
Muromontite was discovered and named, but soon after, it was deemed to be a form of allanite, so the name muromontite was discredited. We are told to call it allanite instead. However allanite normally has aluminium where muromontite has beryllium.
In other words, the bureaucrats who control naming are saying we may not distinguish between the aluminium and beryllium forms of the mineral when naming it.
I find this very annoying, because there is probably much more of this fascinating mineral than just that produced by the Swedish quarry, but as officially it must all be called allanite, and most allanite has aluminium where muromontite has beryllium, we have no way of knowing which allanite does contain beryllium and which is the boring conventional aluminium version. Ah, you've got to hand it to those academics to find a way to fight about just about anything. Not that the non-academics are any better: Dozens of unusual varieties of apples in England are going extinct because the EU hasn't defined an official name for them, and people selling apples under unofficial names are prosecuted for fraud. If the variety doesn't have an EU name, it can't be sold, never mind that it's been on the market for twelve hundred years.
But I digress. Considering the virtual impossibility of owning any real quantity of plutonium, this is probably the best sample I'm going get.
Source: eBay seller rubbleshop
Contributor: eBay seller rubbleshop
Acquired: 19 October, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 0.1"
Purity: <1%
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Sample from the Everest Element Set.
Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (excepted gasses) weight about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid.
Radioactive elements like this one are represented in this particular set by a non-radioactive dummy powder, which doesn't look anything like the real element. (In this case a sample of the pure element isn't really practical anyway.)
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order.
Source: Rob Accurso
Contributor: Rob Accurso
Acquired: 7 February, 2003
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: 0%
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