[TheForge] OT:

[shawn.bennett09 at gmail.com]

Good afternoon guys. I'm pretty new to the forum and wanted to join for the smithing tips, but I feel as if I'm somewhat uniquely (although very slightly) qualified to add to this. I spent 8 years in the U.S. Army Field Artillery blowing up stuff for a living until I broke my back and now I'm an engineer for PSE&G, NJ's power company. 
 - DE rounds ARE radioactive but you would need to keep them on your skin for an extended period of time or ingest them, whether it's dust breathed in or eaten doesn't matter. The reason they are so effective is due to the unusually dense material they are made of.  Kind of like the difference between an old lead ball and a full metal jacket. Just means more penetration. I used them almost 1/2 the time we fired direct fire rounds in Saudi. Punched through damn near anything. The Gun Bunnies, troops assigned to the guns and ammo,  lived with them for months at a time with no ill affects. Don't know if I'd want to heat them up and start pounding on them though. 

 - nuclear station. The reason you keep hearing about these "explosions" isn't due to the nuclear material "melting down" its due to the steam pressure building up in the containment chambers. The plant doesn't have enough power to cycle the heavy water solution around the core. In order to pump more heavy water (which was destroyed and lost in the tsunami) through the containment chamber housing the core needs a "primary" type of electricity. That is usually 13,000 volts or more. Its not something they can run on standard generators. So the standing solution in the chamber heats up to critical temperatures. This causes steam ruptures (the explosions mentioned above). The steam is tainted with the radioactive isotope from the core but it is hardly a meltdown nor a true nuclear explosion. Considering the time delay and the extent of the damage, I'd say that the plant, although a truly old plant, is and has held up damn well. Should the core be allowed to heat up to the point of a meltdown, well, that would suck for a lot of people within a 50 mile radius, but that shouldn't happen. In an absolute emergency they will drop acid and water alternatively on the site to "cool" the reaction enough to keep it sub-critical.  Doing this now would jeopardize the recovery efforts of the men working down there and cost the company billions more. I'm guessing that its a 50/50 on why they haven't yet. Due to the ruptures the cores are partially exposed now. It wouldn't be hard for them to flush them from above. 

Hope this helps and I hope I didn't screw up any of my "facts". 

I wish those men the best luck. They are essentially working a suicide mission as we speak of it. They are truly brave souls.  Its doubtful they will survive the amounts of exposure they have experienced within the last week but I expect they will finish the job. They are true hero's of the WORLD and I hope they are memorialized as such. A full scale meltdown and resulting critical explosion would spread radioactive isotopes across 1/2 the world. 

I wish them luck. 

 Shawn Bennett
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: peter fels <artgawk at thegrid.net>
Sender: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:08:33 
To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA<theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Reply-To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [TheForge] OT:


On Mar 16, 2011, at 2:38 PM, ries wrote:

> I am pretty sure that Uri Hofi, the Israeli smith, uses a tool or two made from tungsten anti tank rounds he found  in the Sinai.
> I have heard that his helpers brought in some DU rounds as well, and tried to forge them, without success.
> I am not sure how radioactive they still are- 
> But I have heard that its the dust from rounds that have turned to plasma on impact that is what you have to worry about.
> If the round missed, it is still a cohesive chunk of DU, and, unless you grind it up and eat it, not anywhere near as toxic to humans.
> 
> ries
 Rates of childhood leukemia in the areas where a lot of DU ammo was used are very high already.
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