How hazardous is thorium?

[chilehed]

Another question about my kid; he's trying to get a collection of all the elements he can wants me to grab him a piece of tungsten welding rod. It's alloyed with 2% thorium, and I'm wondering how much risk of radiation exposure there is.

 

My gut feeling is "not much", since he's not going to be sleeping with it and OSHA hasn't pulled it from the workplace. If it were mine I'd think nothing of it, but it's my kids'....

 

Thanks.

[[Tycho?]]

Probably not much.

 

http://www.wikipedia.com

[Gilded]

I wouldn't mind having even pure thorium around (being an element collector myself). It isn't really that dangerous, and has a half-life of over 10 billion years. I recall thorium being a carcinogen though. But hey, what isn't? Tell your kid not to lick it etc. and everything's fine (especially considering it's just 2%).

[Martin]

Another question about my kid; he's trying to get a collection of all the elements he can wants me to grab him a piece of tungsten welding rod. It's alloyed with 2% thorium, and I'm wondering how much risk of radiation exposure there is.

 

My gut feeling is "not much", since he's not going to be sleeping with it and OSHA hasn't pulled it from the workplace. If it were mine I'd think nothing of it, but it's my kids'....

 

Thanks.

 

since he's your kid you may want to have the info you give him especially correct, throw in some extra trivia in case it is interesting (and so on).

 

if not skip this post.

 

AFAIK the tungsten welding rod has the tungsten alloyed with THORIUM DIOXIDE, not with metallic thorium

 

the high-temp ceramic thoria, as an ingredient, helps the rod keep shape

 

most uses of thorium in the past have actually involved thoria

 

e.g. THEY USED TO FEED THORIUM DIOXIDE TO PEOPLE who were going to be X-rayed to increase the contrast of the picture to show details better, if needed-----until it was discovered that it sometimes caused cancer of the bile duct (part of your liver)

 

e.g. before electric lights people used gas lights in their houses and THE MAIN USE OF THORIUM DIOXIDE WAS GAS MANTLES, little chimney-things that the flame heats so they glow brightly and where most of the light comes from.

 

the good thing about thorium dioxide is it is a high-temperature ceramic that you can heat up very hot----it won't melt at temperatures where most metals do melt.

 

More info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_dioxide

 

I agree with majority view here that it is reasonably safe to have around (as a component of the tungsten sample welding rod) even tho mildly radioactive and carcinogenic if ingested. (just my personal view)

 

BTW there is a experimental nuclear reactor in Germany supposed to run on a thorium cycle IIRC. I think Thorium breeds fissionable U233. High-temperature gas-cooled. I could be wrong---I think there's a breeder cycle that does not involve plutonium. Should check Wiki about this.