Thank you so much for watching! If you are interested in seeing my reaction to another crazy homemade uranium experiment, please check out my reaction to Styropyro's URANIUM CRAYON! ruclips.net/video/GuoAQ4SXtv4/видео.htmlsi=4RMyLLdiW38fIEzz
Nigel was on the Trash Taste podcast, and he talked about this project. He asked the Canadian government about the legal implications of amateur/private citizen chemistry using uranium. What he was told was that the laws in Canada around radioactive materials only apply to using them for their radioactive properties. Therefore because the fluorescent property of uranium glass comes from its chemical properties and not from its radioactivity, legally he could just throw all his radioactive waste in the regular trash, but they “strongly prefer [he] didn’t”. 😂
@@tillburr6799 That would be the country we are the hat of. Canada'd be like, "We don't have a reason to send people with horses to trample you, don't give us one and clean up your messes or we'll hit you as hard as the maple syrup thieves."
@@Natso_1 I mean, Canada the only nation where the cops are more corrupt than it's own government, and it's government is the definition of corrupt. Canada: Horse police tramples elderly lady and she ends up in hospital with broken bones... also Canada, no one was hurt today, I don't care if you got video evidence of us harassing the citizens.
Yep, Nile Red/Nigel has a degree in chemistry and is a real pro. Some of his experiments have spanned months, and he has a remarkable tenacity to stick with and repeat things until he gets it right.
i love Nilered, but dont worry about safety! He built his own personal lab for these videos, complete with fumehoods and plenty of storage and PPE. He also has his own glassware (the beakers are all labeled "NileRed")
@@k1zer100 pretty sure he built one into his house or something. He used to do them in his kitchen but that's gets pretty nasty quickly. He should have a video of his lab somewhere. Maybe on Nileblue
@@k1zer100he used to do these out of his parents house but at around 1 million subscribers he had saved up enough to make a lab, he rented a like 4 room places, broke one of the walls to make a room bigger, and bought all he needed to do what he needs (including PPE) he has a couple videos on this process and it's genuinely really cool. Online resellers were his savior apparently lol
@@k1zer100 He is renting a space for a lab, it is not inside of his house it is a separate office space. There are some videos on his second channel Nile Blue of him moving into the lab a few years back iirc!
I work in nuclear reprocessing and waste management. We have a plant that we use for vitrification of radioactive effluent and liquor, it's not too dissimilar to the process that Nile uses here. Obviously it's on a greater scale and the contents are highly radioactive, meaning we have certain safeguards in place. But the end result is still the same, radioactive glass. We use vitrification because it is easier to track and control solid waste than liquid waste. All the liquid that is boiled off as part of the process is filtered of any remaining radioactive particles, then converted to steam which is also used to power some of the other plants on the site. Vitrification is one of the cleanest and safest ways to deal with radioactive effluent.
I love NileRed, he'll casually do some uranium chemistry and then turn around and say "I've never made glass before" as if that were the difficult/dangerous part 😂
Always admire Nile's attention to safety. Out of any science youtuber I've seen that does chemistry, they are the safest, despite working with arguably far more dangerous things
Actually, that makes perfect sense. When working with more dangerous things, you should probably be more careful. For example, I don't see why someone like Thought Emporium would need to use safety goggles, when they're working with living cells.
@@cobaltchromee7533 I don't even mean in scale with the type of work done, I just mean in general, I feel a lot of science youtubers don't have proportionally appropriate safety standards
I'm a fan of @NileRed and I do believe he was working with a lab-grade fume hood at this point in his RUclips career, and at his own off-site lab no less. Some geniuses have all the luck 🙂Also worth noting that he has a video about the cleanup from this experiment on his NileBlue channel which is also a good watch.
Something worrying that was found out a few years ago was to do with “negative ion bracelets” or something like that, basically similar to healing crystals. What was found was that some of these bracelets and necklaces, mixed in with the silicone were thorium particles and were radioactive enough to cause some damage if you used them as intended. Also since they were just mixed in with the silicone, the thorium could probably come out/break off during everyday use, allowing the thorium to get inside people. There were a few RUclips videos on it but I can’t remember who by.
not only just thorium being embedded in the silicone, but also thoriated blankets and other items that could potentially contain loose thorium powder which is not only easy to potentialy spill but also inhale. those bracelets are probably the safest form of that garbage ironically.
Oh yeah, thats 99% why "radioactive = green". Its because from radium painted glow in the dark watches and clock faces, uranium glazed ceramics, uranium glass, uranium in jewelry, etc. It certainly didn't come out of nowhere lol
@@XtreeM_FaiL Sort of / depends. Many lights, and presumably phosphors, put out UV and use a coating. In this case, the uranium can act as that coating.
First time seeing your channel, but I'm a long-term fan of Nile. All his videos are extremely well detailed, and he even has videos about the cleaning process of the different chemicals that he used. He has videos about his entire lab setup, which is honestly impressive for someone doing RUclips videos. He loves what he's doing, and it shows in the videos. Spending days, or even weeks, on a single video idea for him is nothing. Some of the experiments he did took MONTHS.
Nigel, or Nile, is my favorite education-based youtuber, and I appreciate this look at his stuff. I'm enjoying you watching and educating along with these kinds of channels.
Uranium salts were also used as a pigment for bricks. Early in my career, I worked at a research facility which was built in the early 20th century. A radon assay was done in one of the buildings and radon was detected in the corner rooms. It turned out that the source of the radon was the yellow brick in the walls.
That is so cool... and horrifying. In my country Radon buildup is a common problem, and your comment has me wondering whether the yellow bricks in some of the older houses may be adding to the natural levels.
For your personal enrichment, yellowcake is a bright yellow, and most of the chemical processing of spent fuel is also quite yellow, being oxides, etc. ALSO as a glassblower, you CAN buy uranium glass rods, theyre just very expensive and rare. old stock mostly.
The reason the non-florescent uranium compound becomes florescent in the glass is because the uranium gets oxidized when you mix it with the glass. Uranium can have tons of different oxidation states, but only specific ones are florescent. I forget which ones, +12 maybe? Regardless, it's this oxidation state that gives rise to the fluorescence. You could say when the uranium is added to the glass it's not the same uranium compound, but that's kind of a funny way to say that. The uranium is now part of the glass structure, so it's not really it's own compound in the glass.
My wife used to be a high school chemistry teacher and we would go to flea markets with a Geiger counter to find household radionuclides, like "vaseline" glass, so called because it's color resembles vasiline. You can actually tell if it was manufactured in the 30's or later by how hot it is. In the 30's, it was made with raw uranium. After the 40's, it was made with depleated uranium. We also looked for "Fiesta ware" plates and bowls. The orange-red ceramic glaze was also made with uranium.
personally fiesta ware scares me, if only somewhat. because fiesta ware is more likely to chip or scrape the glaze if its used as intended, and you ingest that, which then wreaks havoc on your innards until you figure out what happened.
I inherited some classic Fiestaware. The wonderful combination of lead paint with uranium glaze. For dishes. They ate and drank out of this stuff!!! But it sure is pretty.
Nigel usually handles most syntheses he does in his fumehood Generally, flat black or white background means its in his fumehood Not always Uranium chemistry from what ive seen in demonstrations tend to be pretty colorful, and often kinda green or yellow or blue. Metal chemistry tends to be colorful Also, uranyl nitrate is extremely soluble, and subsequently toxic, and some sources say it can absorbed through skin. Some say absorption isnt significant, but skin contamination is still significant. The danger is still ingestion, but now its really really solible and will dissolve into the sweat on your hands rather than just sitting there
RUclips randomly reccomended your channel and I'm glad it did. This was great content especially considering your education, background, and expertise in the matter!
Depleted uranium actually is used in nuclear weapons just as a tamper instead of core material its density making it well suited to this role coupled with the fact that when bombarded with enough neutrons it too will react
I heard once that the reason why depleted uranium shells are so good at penetrating armour is partially because of the density of depleted uranium, but also because of the way it interacts with the armour itself. A typical steel shell (or pretty much any other metal used in ammunition, for that matter), tends to mushroom out at the front as it passes through armour. Apparently, a depleted uranium shell essentially sharpens itself as it passes through armour instead of mushrooming out. This is something I heard about maybe once or twice quite a while ago, and I have not researched the topic, so please take the above paragraph with a grain of salt.
It's oblative so sheds the outside off rather than mushrooming, while kind of self sharpening it doesn't really get sharp, however since DU is pyrophoric the dust/fragments auto ignite when in contact with the air. So it's a super dense armour piercing dart that doesn't mushroom out, sets things on fire inside and outside the tank (such as the big autoloaders in the Russian tanks leading to the turret popping off like a high powered party popper.)
5:35 I built my own counter from a cheap solder kit for 20 bucks. I found the asphalt outside my flat is about 4 times more radioactive than the woods around it I was looking into building a gamma ray spectrometer, but the crystal alone would come in at hundreds of money units. Certainly not the price range for me for something just to toy around with. 36:40 most cheap counters that offer measurements in Sv/h or similar are calibrated to specific materials, like uranium. So when it detects some amount of particles, it assumes those particles to be in proportion as per the calibration material.
I am delighted to hear an expert opine that NileRed really IS as meticulous as he seems to be in all his videos. I have enjoyed Nile's content for years, and it always seemed to me that he was taking reasonable precautions.
@@raeofsunshine8377 I consumed a dictionary in my youth, and occasionally I regurgitate ostentatious and / or bombastic verbiage ;) Yes, I have been soundly trounced for my termnity, however I was undeterred and continued with egregious usage of vocabulary. My opponents were impotently enraged, which delighted me. ( as a side note, my favorite dinosaur is the Thesaurus )
NileRed is my favorite chemist!! My granddaughter and I watch his videos together. I’m so happy he got his new lab. He has the exuberance and fascination of a young person, with the education and knowledge to make chemistry understandable and fun. He also never quits. He is always trying to make whatever he’s doing better.
Bead shops are a great place to look for modern uranium glass ... or at least that was my experience a couple decades ago. A keen eye is almost as good as a geiger counter. I was even able to procure some within the Berkeley (CA) "nuclear-free zone". Alas, the beads were not free. Even so, a lot less trouble than rolling your own.
2:00 I didn't know Uranium, but I did know radium was once very popular, at some time your goods almost cannot be sold unless you claim you have added radium to make it "nuclear". A fun fact is that in some cheap goods, the companies actually lied and no radium was added, so they accidentally protected their customers.
newcomer to your channel here; kudos to you for making this an actual reaction video! Your reactions add a lot to the original video which is what a react video should always strive to be. Too many people just steal other creators content under the name fair use and don't add anything to the video except laughing along and that really annoys me.
This! Actual add of info, Personal comment/stories, warning when he doesn't know much about the subject, ... and so much more. From a little channel i'm amazed. Actual legitimate good stuff.
This type of reaction video may still fall under copyright misuse, unfortunately. When you watch the entire video in full, it's always a little bit sketchy. I, as a general rule, try to avoid reaction videos that watch the entire source video because it really hurts the original creator. Taking little snippets of revelant material is generally a better practice. This guy does it better than most, though the commentary does consume less of the video duration than the original content, which is, again, risky regarding content protections. Legal Eagle has a good video regarding this topic. Worth a watch if you're interested.
@@Malicious2013 There should be, at least in theory, absolutely no problem with copyright infringement, at least according to LegalEagle's late September video addressing the systematic theft of content in the Reaction Streamer community. This reaction is about 40% longer in duration than the original video, and with the additional perspective and information added, it can easily be considered transformative, and it was made more than three and a half years after the date of the original upload, which for this period has realized almost 12 million views.
I love Nile red! I apologize if I haven’t noticed it yet, but have you ever watched Cody , the guy he referenced with the thunder can? He’s awesome and a very worthwhile rabbit hole for reactions
I heard that the association between radiation and glowimg green originally stems from WW1. They used to paint the watch faces and compasses with a radioactive paint that would glow green at night and in the dim trench light (I think radium). I think many just assumed that anything radioactive glows green. Personally i like the blue more.
1:54 I'm a scientific glassblower. Uranium glass was actually essential for glass-to-metal seals. Anything with a tungsten filament that needed to be hermetically sealed used a small amount of uranium glass. The development of other metals and other glasses means that is almost not the case now, but it was common for many years and has only fairly recently fallen out of use. I'm sure on some of the older machines that might be within the nuclear facility, if you find anything with an easy to reach ion gauge or something similar that you might find something. The seal on the tungsten wire tends to look very orange, but getting out a UV torch will still make that glass at the seal glow green if uranium glass was used.
We use boric acid in glassmaking to lower the thermal coefficient of expansion, which reduces strain as the glass cools. That’s how you make old-fashioned pyrex. 1100°C is actually a little cool for borosilicate. The person who taught my wife and I glassblowing used to run the glass furnace up to about 1200°C to "fine" it, and that was a soda lime glass.
Depleted Uranium is used in thermonuclear weapons as a tamper, and the neutrons from the fusion reaction cause it to undergo fission itself, significantly increasing the yield.
This guy does some of the coolest stuff. On NileRed, he has his more serious projects, like making cherry soda out of paint thinner, transparent wood, or bromine (his favorite carcinogen). On NileBlue, he has his more silly projects, like making the world's purest cookie.
NileRed has done some impressive organic and inorganic chemical processes. He'll start with something like Nitrile gloves and end up after numerous reactions with 'grape soda'. Love watching him and he does work in a good lab.
I really enjoyed this reaction; you brought a lot of insight. It's cool when safety-focused people from different disciplines still converge on the same risks and mitigation strategies.
I've been watching NileRed long enough to know that usually when he's showing chemicals outside of containers like with that uranyl nitrate, it's under his fume hood. So you can rest easy on that one, dude. Also powdered sodium diuranate is the forbidden mac n cheese powder.
@@AB-80X I mean, whatever is interesting to him? I like all of NileRed stuff; the 'food' related ones are interesting, like Gloves to Grape Soda. But literally anything that strikes his fancy I'd be happy to watch more of. What do you mean 'safety and legal', you mean copyright strikes? If so, its entirely at the discretion of NileRed. Im not under the impression hes anti-reaction videos, so I don't think there is a high likelihood of any real risk of doing a video from him every so often. Otherwise, Im not so sure what you mean.
I lived near a pottery artist as a kid. She had drawers full of various powders for ceramic glaze. One drawer contained about 10lbs of powdered uranium ore. Makes the bright orange glaze once fired on pottery.
21:18 Boric acid is used not for shielding properties, but because it increases the durability of glass. You might recognize borosilicate glassware brand names like "Duran" or "Pyrex" that have been stamped on equipment in both kitchens and chemistry labs, because it is both highly durable and heat resistant.
@@HenriFaust It used to be but they have changed to something else which is why if you look, you can find many articles and videos about Pyrex exploding.
He never said it was used for shielding. He said it was used for its neutron absorption in reactors. He never mentioned its use in glass other than saying it was interesting it was used in both
@@RobinTheBot the lab glassware still is, but the USA made consumer-grade stuff is now made of soda-lime glass-much inferior to the borosilicate glass used before.
I really appreciate seeing two knowledgeable people discuss a topic. Chemistry and Nuclear Physics are topics that probably 99% of the population will never know the details of let alone feel like they have any truck with, so seeing a video narrating the process of making uranium glass and having commentary by an expert--and that BOTH videos are so digestible by the layperson--is a really cool window into an otherwise mystical realm that we could never hope to get to. Thanks for sharing!
If you wanna check more about his safety steps and his setup, he has another channel for that called NileBlue. I think he has a cleanup video for this project specifically on there.
30:00 - The reason the one piece broke is because he didn't anneal the glass and bring the temps down gradually. Stresses weren't allowed to be released in the annealing process... and it ripped itself apart.
I pick up and deliver at the Fiestaware plant in Newell, WV on occasion. I took my radiation detector in there once and it spooked me. Even though they stopped making radioactive dishware decades ago, it's still fairly radioactive for a factory. That side of the factory is now a tourist stop and the gift shop area iirc. Definitely worth checking out if you ever end up along the Ohio River in WV.
I'm not a chemist, but always wonder where the fumes in a fumehood go - surely it's not just vented outside. How are they treated? It must be more sophisticated than something like a carbon filter?
Organic chemist here. It really depends on what you are working with. I work with Fluorinated Organophosphate compounds which can be extremely toxic and dangerous, as part of alternative pesticide research. We vent everything though chemical scrubbers. Some hoods use "mechanical" filters that are designed to catch small particles, which you would use in such a case as with NileRed. There are also some chemical scrubbers that can be used in this situation. What setup he uses? Who knows. I'm guessing a mix of HEPA and chem filters. And lastly, in work where you have low level toxicity and low pollution, you simply vent it outside of the building without any treatment. Fume hoods and their filter systems come in a wide variety of types. Ours are as simple as a caustic scrubbers that will react with the vapours given off and thus neutralizing them.
I once visited a lack working with highly radioactive materials, and the filtration system for their "fume hoods" took up as much space in the building as the rest of the lab...
It always amazes me that everyone has the same examples for the various levels of exposure. Dental scan, airplane trip, banana, etc. I assume it's from everyone having similar charts when they learned it, but the consistency is still impressive.
Uranium glass is commonly known as Vaseline glass, my mother used to collect it and yes they did make drinking glasses from that material. I'd like to see you do a reaction to the Radium Girls.. I'm sure there are several educational history based utube videos on them It's an incredibly sad story. If you are unaware of the story at the turn of the 20th century people liked glow in the dark watches. At the time watch makers painted the face of watches with a radium based paint. To get a very fine point on a paint brush the workers would lick the ends of their brushes. After a year or more at the job their teeth would fall out, or their jaws would break from radiation poisoning. Many would eventually get cancer and die a long painful death.
if you ever try out gaming. you should play minecraft with the industrial craft 2 mod (specifically ic2 classic) (its got nuclear reactors in it and theres so many ways you can set up one, its also a late game power source and the best power source)
Yeah those affordable Geiger counters are still around ~$100. Also would putting the cool uranium glass in a secondary container filled with water make it shielded enough to say, wear to a rave?
The amount of radiation from the glass is basically harmless maybe not wear tons of it every day but generally its fine. You can hold blocks of pure uranium in your hand no problem, and the glass has only a fraction. The alpha gets blocked by your upper skin layer
Depleted Uranium is amazing for weapons because not only is it denser than lead meaning you can carry more energy, it also ablates through armor in a very specific way that actually makes it sharper as it goes through, making it more effective with more armor to go through. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of one of those shells.
Nile is truly dedicated to his craft, imo. Seeing a professional be impressed by his standards, safety precautions, and methods of approach is definitely validating of that opinion.
I was born in the late 60s and came of age before the end of the Cold War. The ever present threat of USSR nuclear bombs falling out of the sky was a low level but constant fear during my childhood. Once the internet was born I found tons of information online about all things nuclear that wasn't easily accessible pre-internet. Because of this easy access, over the past couple of decades I've sucked up every bit of information I can find about nuclear energy and radioactivity: from radium dials on watches to the nuclear fusion explosions kept in check by gravity that we call stars. Discovering your channel makes me super happy. Seeing another content creator "playing" with uranium blows my Cold War influenced mind. I'm really excited to have found your channel and now Nile's. Science was not cool for girls when I grew up and I crave fact based information sources that are easy to understand. So thanks! I think a day of binge watching your content is in my immediate future.
For a reference, here are the temps/targets I use when doing fusing and slumping art glass: (I work with System 96 glass, so garget temps will vary.) from Room Temp to about 1,000 Deg F/357.8 Deg C - Fragile zone. Solid glass in this range is subject to thermal shock and can shatter. Not an issue for making powder into glass. 960 Deg F/515.6 Deg C - Soak target temp to allow glass to relax and anneal, so it won't likely shatter on it's own. 1250 Deg F/676.7 Deg C - Soak target Temp when ramping up temperature. Also edge of plastic/fluid state where glass is soft and taffy like. 1350 Deg F/723.3 Deg C - Soak target temp for slumping panes of glass into molds. 1400 Deg F/760.0 Deg C - Soak Target Temp for making smaller bits of glass stick together (Fusing). At this temp, glass retains it's sharp edges and corners. 1450 Deg F/787.8 Deg C - Soak Target Temp for Fusing. Used to soften the edges and corners, but still leave them intact. 1500 Deg F/815.6 Deg C - Soak Target Temp for Fusing. Used to take glass near puddle like. All edges and corners melt off and round out due to surface tension. 1700 Deg F/926.7 Deg C - Soak Target Temp for Casting glass in a mold. Mostly used for solid chunks being melted down inside the mold. 2300 Deg F/1260 Deg C - Target temp for melting glass, especially for "glory hole" kilns. This is the temp for pouring glass into a mold. The kiln I have can only go up to 1700 Deg F, because it's a small kiln used for slumping and fusing glass. I have ramped it that high in an attempt to make glass spacers for a fountain I never finished. I don't know how fluid Glass blowers need their glass to be, but I assume it's somewhere between 1700 Deg F and 2300 Deg F. (I'm being lazy and not looking it up.) For what Nile needs, I think he needed to go hotter. I don't remember what I posted in his video when I watched it a while ago. The nice thing is he doesn't need to slowly ramp up the temperature in the kiln he's using because he's working with powder and not solid glass chunks. HOWEVER, he will have to SLOWLY ramp down the temperature and probably have a few soak holds to anneal the glass so it won't just shatter. Don't remember if he did that. Luckily, they're smallish pieces, so he can be a little aggressive with the cool down. Larger pieces have to go as slow as you can and then even slower to keep the temperature equalized in the piece. EDIT: If you want to see if there is stress in the glass (from how it was created), you need a light table and two pieces of polarized plastic. Place one polarized sheet on the light table. Place the glass piece on top of it. Then place the other polarized piece on top and turn the top piece (90 Degrees) until the area around the glass piece is black. The light will go through the glass and be visible. Any stresses in the glass will show up as lines and the cloudier the piece, the more stress it has and likely to break. However, Tempered Glass uses this stress against itself to make the glass incredibly strong and likely to break into cubes instead of shards when it does break.
I'm hindsight it's ridiculously obvious that a hairline fracture in glass would polarize light, but I would never have thought of it. Physics is so damn cool.
I would love to see more nilered reactions, i think this is the only nuclear related video he has done but he has a lot of other interesting projects like "turning paint thinner into cherry soda"
There is his video on his NileBlue channel where he cleans up the waste from this video's project. Could be interesting to see how well that tracks with the standards in the industry.
The GMC-500+ Is much better than the 320. But yeah those are good dosimeters. What's interesting though is that there are still many uranium products around, Uranium Garden Gnomes, Uranium glass, uranium ceramics, yellowcake (raw uranium core - no not edible). Its always facinating how much we as humans take things go crazy with it, then go crazy controlling it, then go crazy again trying to explain it is safe to do it again and no one wants it after that.
I have NEVER heard this about smoking. Not for doctors, nay sayers, nagging Nellies, etc. Thank you so much for enlightening me on this additional risk from smoking. I’m genuinely grateful!
It’s not particularly related to this video, but have you heard of the Okla mine nuclear reactor? I think it is one of the most fascinating cases of nuclear criticality I have read.
31:40 To anneal glass, it is necessary to heat it to its annealing temperature, at which its viscosity, η, drops to 1013 Poise (1013 dyne-second/cm²).[2] For most kinds of glass, this annealing temperature is in the range of 454-482 °C (850-900 °F)[citation needed], and is the so-called stress-relief point or annealing point of the glass. At such a viscosity, the glass is still too hard for significant external deformation without breaking, but it is soft enough to relax internal strains by microscopic flow in response to the intense stresses they introduce internally. The piece then heat-soaks until its temperature is even throughout and the stress relaxation is adequate. The time necessary for this step varies depending on the type of glass and its maximum thickness. The glass then is permitted to cool at a predetermined rate until its temperature passes the strain point (η = 1014.5 Poise)[citation needed], below which even microscopic internal flow effectively stops and annealing stops with it. It then is safe to cool the product to room temperature at a rate limited by the heat capacity, thickness, thermal conductivity, and thermal expansion coefficient of the glass. After annealing is complete the material can be cut to size, drilled, or polished without risk of its internal stresses shattering it.
I thik the green glow myth also comes from radium and tritium radioluminescense as green is the brightest and most common color used with zinc sulfide being ideal for the purpose. I wonder if if a self illuminating phosphorescent form of uranium glass that illuminates itself with charged particles is possible. Like a self glowing crystal that doesn't need a phospor coating.
11:10 Do you have a reference for that? With some googling I didn't really find anything relevant other than the IAEA publication "One Decade After Chernobyl" which mentioned that the "Health Effects" project tested lead levels in children of contaminated villages, based on concerns about possible lead poisoning voiced local physicians and because "lead poisoning was a concern of many parents as a result of potential emission of materials dumped on the reactor", but they found that "Children in all villages had blood lead levels that were generally lower than those normally found in western Europe and the USA."
Eating out of it isn't too bad, microscopic glass particles will just pass on through. It's when you breathe the particles in that you start having real problems, because they get stuck in your lungs. This is the same problem that occurs with cigarettes, as the mineral fertilizer used in fields is contaminated by lead-210 and polonium-210. The same fertilizer is used to grow food in the USA, by the way, but food doesn't normally get trapped in your lungs like tobacco tar.
I used to drive a Tractor Trailer out in California one day south of Los Angeles somewhere I can't remember exactly on an exit ramp I found a huge pile of yellow powder apparently dumped from a bulk tanker driver I knew to call the Haz Mat emergency phone number I told the operator lady whom answered it looks to be unnaturally a very strong yellow I don't know if it's yellow cake refined uranium or if it's paint pigment I parked at the truck stop and watched as a vaccum truck showed up with a loud speaker warning people to avoid breathing the material the haz mat operator tryed to assure me it wasn't yellow cake uranium that nothing of the sort was in California as a resource being mined & trucked in such a manor. Yet they were careful to warn people to stay away & not breath it i suspect it likely was either chemicals or paint pigment in bulk it was strange that people were risking driving over this huge pile of yellow powder with only myself knowing to call hazmat LoL people are so dumb
Uranium glass was produced simply as another color of glass. Uranium salts were mixed into glass to create particular yellow colors in natural light, just like other metals' salts would produce other specific colors. The fluorescence of the glass was a quality that wasn't apparent to people until years later when UV lights became available.
BTW, Metals (and their oxides, et al) are added in TINY AMOUNTS to color glass. Window Glass has a little bit of Iron in it to give it that clear look, but the edges will always be a bit green. I think Gold makes glass red, and I don't remember the other color combinations. I just buy my glass in sheets already colored.
In plant GMO they use use a tiny "shotgun" loaded with nano-size gold mixed in water and the genetic material they want to transfer, since gold is not going to react with the samples or host plant. That nano solution is indeed red!
You can easily find vintage & antique uranium glass bowls, dishes, cake plates, custard dishes, candle holders, cups, mugs, even glass lamps, etc. etc. at thrift stores.
Also he has a video on the cleanup process behind this experiment, it was interesting to see everything that went into it and that he properly handles all the waste and contaminated equipment
I grew up back in the 70's in Crystal River Fl and I remember going through the nuclear plant while under construction on a school feild trip. We also were able to tour the 2 coal fired plants as well. (it was a different time! I can't imagine that being allowed today!!!). A few years later we were given a tour through the operating nuc plants control room (again, can't imagine that today!!!). I lived within the 5 mile "Kill Zone" and I remember the sirens were at the end of our road... Pointed away from us 🙂We used to kid out of towners that we glowed at night ;-) I remember some of the best fishing ever at the warm water outlet of the plant!!! Red fish especially enjoyed the warm water!!! Later on they built 2 more larger coal plants and had cooling towers for them, most people thought they were for the nuc plant, but they weren't... I was able to tour their costruction as well and remember hollaring in the tower and how it echoed ;-) Also got to stand in the smoke stack b4 they put the guts in it and was amazed at how much it swayed in the wind!!!(It was 600' tall and my friend (who eventually wound up running the nuc plant) asked if I wanted to go up in the elevator to the top of the stack... NOOOO was my answer ;+) Great video sir!!!
Uranium glass can still be found in antique shops. You can find the clear, lime-green glass as well as (usually marbles) a greenish, petroleum jelly looking glass. These, too, are fluorescent under UV.
He mentioned that the sand on the Nuclear Bomb test sites melted from the heat. Fun fact, the molten Sand even got its own name "Trinitite". People were so interested in this stuff that the Goverment made a Law that prohibits the collection of it. So every bit of Trinitite that is available today was collected before they made the Law.
Uranium was commonly used as a glaze in making tiles prior to around 1940. Lots of old houses will still have these, and they are slightly radioactive.
I love this video and that video. I have a piece of Uranium(U, 92) glass from the 1950s that I think has Uranium Dioxide as the special sauce. It is an ashtray. It is a yellow-green color and is called Vaseline Uranium Glass. It doesn't have a seam of any kind and it fluoresces just like his and gives Geiger/Dosimiters plenty to talk about. I don't have a proper display case so I have it wrapped in the foam it came in. I'm 70s born 80s kid and when I was a child every time you heard about Radiation it was just Uranium(U, 92) that was always the element mentioned. U is what gave some superheroes their powers. Also, not many people knew about the unnatural elements to follow starting with Neptunium(Np, 93) and Plutonium(Pu, 94) If Uranium is the murderer of the Periodic Table Plutonium is a Hannibal Lector Crazed Serial Killer. Plutonium is 1 of, if not the only element that can spontaneously undergo fusion/fission with no reason and no warning.
Uranium glass is a staple in scientific glass blowing shops, because it gives a tight seal with metal, such as you would want around electrodes extending from an external power supply into a vacuum chamber.
Thank you so much for watching! If you are interested in seeing my reaction to another crazy homemade uranium experiment, please check out my reaction to Styropyro's URANIUM CRAYON! ruclips.net/video/GuoAQ4SXtv4/видео.htmlsi=4RMyLLdiW38fIEzz
time to get hella learnt
Hello Sir! Can you check out QSERF- Quantum Science Energy Reasearch Facility ? Please. Is a roblox game like the one you watched earlier this year.
I bet ya people get the green glowy uranium image from Bart in the intro of The Simpsons.
Only you could get one of the beads..slip it in your pocket before the check at work lol
Great video! 😹👍
Nigel was on the Trash Taste podcast, and he talked about this project. He asked the Canadian government about the legal implications of amateur/private citizen chemistry using uranium. What he was told was that the laws in Canada around radioactive materials only apply to using them for their radioactive properties. Therefore because the fluorescent property of uranium glass comes from its chemical properties and not from its radioactivity, legally he could just throw all his radioactive waste in the regular trash, but they “strongly prefer [he] didn’t”. 😂
Alternative phrasing “we dont have a reason to kick your ass for putting it in regular trash, but by god will we try to find one”
@@tillburr6799Sounds more like the US, but Canada could probably pull it off.
@@tillburr6799 They wouldn't bother.
@@tillburr6799 That would be the country we are the hat of.
Canada'd be like, "We don't have a reason to send people with horses to trample you, don't give us one and clean up your messes or we'll hit you as hard as the maple syrup thieves."
@@Natso_1 I mean, Canada the only nation where the cops are more corrupt than it's own government, and it's government is the definition of corrupt.
Canada: Horse police tramples elderly lady and she ends up in hospital with broken bones... also Canada, no one was hurt today, I don't care if you got video evidence of us harassing the citizens.
Yep, Nile Red/Nigel has a degree in chemistry and is a real pro. Some of his experiments have spanned months, and he has a remarkable tenacity to stick with and repeat things until he gets it right.
some have taken years! nigel is amazing :)
He's also made superconductors and aerogel, which is pretty awesome.
@@Techno_Idioto he made frickin supercritical fluid and has probably made meth
The ferrofluid video convinced me. His results were better than any commercially sold examples he found.
@@_sandy_meth is actually p easy to make for guys like Nigel lol it's not that complicated. It would only make like a 5 min video
i love Nilered, but dont worry about safety! He built his own personal lab for these videos, complete with fumehoods and plenty of storage and PPE. He also has his own glassware (the beakers are all labeled "NileRed")
Did he really build the lab or does he just rent it from his uni?
@@k1zer100 pretty sure he built one into his house or something. He used to do them in his kitchen but that's gets pretty nasty quickly. He should have a video of his lab somewhere. Maybe on Nileblue
@@ferretforrent1144It's not part of his house. IIRC it's his own lab (everything in it is his own), the actual building it's in is a lease.
@@k1zer100he used to do these out of his parents house but at around 1 million subscribers he had saved up enough to make a lab, he rented a like 4 room places, broke one of the walls to make a room bigger, and bought all he needed to do what he needs (including PPE) he has a couple videos on this process and it's genuinely really cool. Online resellers were his savior apparently lol
@@k1zer100 He is renting a space for a lab, it is not inside of his house it is a separate office space. There are some videos on his second channel Nile Blue of him moving into the lab a few years back iirc!
I work in nuclear reprocessing and waste management. We have a plant that we use for vitrification of radioactive effluent and liquor, it's not too dissimilar to the process that Nile uses here.
Obviously it's on a greater scale and the contents are highly radioactive, meaning we have certain safeguards in place. But the end result is still the same, radioactive glass.
We use vitrification because it is easier to track and control solid waste than liquid waste. All the liquid that is boiled off as part of the process is filtered of any remaining radioactive particles, then converted to steam which is also used to power some of the other plants on the site.
Vitrification is one of the cleanest and safest ways to deal with radioactive effluent.
This nilered guy is no joke
He can turn cotton into cotton candy, plastic gloves into grape soda, plastic gloves + vanilla into hot sauce
This dude's a modern day alchemist and that kicks donkey
Wait until he turns silver into gold
Not to mention toilet paper into rectified ethanol and diamonds into carbonation.
One day, he will turn dirt into diamonds
@@Yichh That's... gonna be more difficult. Definitely outside the scope of chemistry for sure.
I love NileRed, he'll casually do some uranium chemistry and then turn around and say "I've never made glass before" as if that were the difficult/dangerous part 😂
Ironically that turned out to be the only step he had any issues with as well 😂😂
Always admire Nile's attention to safety. Out of any science youtuber I've seen that does chemistry, they are the safest, despite working with arguably far more dangerous things
Actually, that makes perfect sense. When working with more dangerous things, you should probably be more careful. For example, I don't see why someone like Thought Emporium would need to use safety goggles, when they're working with living cells.
NurdRage also does some spicy stuff
@@cobaltchromee7533 I don't even mean in scale with the type of work done, I just mean in general, I feel a lot of science youtubers don't have proportionally appropriate safety standards
I thought the safest was Explosions and Fire /s
Him vs "i did a thing"
I'm a fan of @NileRed and I do believe he was working with a lab-grade fume hood at this point in his RUclips career, and at his own off-site lab no less. Some geniuses have all the luck 🙂Also worth noting that he has a video about the cleanup from this experiment on his NileBlue channel which is also a good watch.
Yes. This was way after he set up his lab. He has two hoods as far as I recall. He's always safe.
Yeah, he has a really great professional setup now... Old Nile was hilariously jank though.
If you still want some shed chemistry, Tom from the Explosions&Fire/Extractions&Ire channels has some good jank.
@@kittycatpilotToms awesome, he laughs in the face of yellow chemistry.
Something worrying that was found out a few years ago was to do with “negative ion bracelets” or something like that, basically similar to healing crystals. What was found was that some of these bracelets and necklaces, mixed in with the silicone were thorium particles and were radioactive enough to cause some damage if you used them as intended. Also since they were just mixed in with the silicone, the thorium could probably come out/break off during everyday use, allowing the thorium to get inside people.
There were a few RUclips videos on it but I can’t remember who by.
Thought emporium I think, it would definitely be a cool reaction to his videos about those companies.
I think Thunderf00t did one
@@invictus_1245 I agree, I would love to see this guy react to thought emporium's videos about "health products" loaded with thorium.
Big Clive iirc
not only just thorium being embedded in the silicone, but also thoriated blankets and other items that could potentially contain loose thorium powder which is not only easy to potentialy spill but also inhale. those bracelets are probably the safest form of that garbage ironically.
Oh yeah, thats 99% why "radioactive = green". Its because from radium painted glow in the dark watches and clock faces, uranium glazed ceramics, uranium glass, uranium in jewelry, etc.
It certainly didn't come out of nowhere lol
The green still comes from phosphor.
@@XtreeM_FaiLokay and?
@@PneumaticFrog And that's it.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks.
@@XtreeM_FaiL Sort of / depends. Many lights, and presumably phosphors, put out UV and use a coating. In this case, the uranium can act as that coating.
First time seeing your channel, but I'm a long-term fan of Nile. All his videos are extremely well detailed, and he even has videos about the cleaning process of the different chemicals that he used. He has videos about his entire lab setup, which is honestly impressive for someone doing RUclips videos. He loves what he's doing, and it shows in the videos. Spending days, or even weeks, on a single video idea for him is nothing. Some of the experiments he did took MONTHS.
Based on the fire extinguisher, he got to put out metal fires, I believe he takes safety seriously.
worlds biggest salt shakee
Nigel, or Nile, is my favorite education-based youtuber, and I appreciate this look at his stuff. I'm enjoying you watching and educating along with these kinds of channels.
Thanks, I appreciate it!
Uranium salts were also used as a pigment for bricks. Early in my career, I worked at a research facility which was built in the early 20th century. A radon assay was done in one of the buildings and radon was detected in the corner rooms. It turned out that the source of the radon was the yellow brick in the walls.
That is so cool... and horrifying.
In my country Radon buildup is a common problem, and your comment has me wondering whether the yellow bricks in some of the older houses may be adding to the natural levels.
the yellow brick road is taking on entirely new forms of meaning now. 😂
For your personal enrichment, yellowcake is a bright yellow, and most of the chemical processing of spent fuel is also quite yellow, being oxides, etc.
ALSO as a glassblower, you CAN buy uranium glass rods, theyre just very expensive and rare. old stock mostly.
I found a piece of uranium glass in a pile of old trash in the woods right next to my house. It's an old cookie jar lid.
The reason the non-florescent uranium compound becomes florescent in the glass is because the uranium gets oxidized when you mix it with the glass. Uranium can have tons of different oxidation states, but only specific ones are florescent. I forget which ones, +12 maybe? Regardless, it's this oxidation state that gives rise to the fluorescence. You could say when the uranium is added to the glass it's not the same uranium compound, but that's kind of a funny way to say that. The uranium is now part of the glass structure, so it's not really it's own compound in the glass.
My wife used to be a high school chemistry teacher and we would go to flea markets with a Geiger counter to find household radionuclides, like "vaseline" glass, so called because it's color resembles vasiline. You can actually tell if it was manufactured in the 30's or later by how hot it is. In the 30's, it was made with raw uranium. After the 40's, it was made with depleated uranium.
We also looked for "Fiesta ware" plates and bowls. The orange-red ceramic glaze was also made with uranium.
Many people still do that because of the resell value. Many garage/flea market people do not fully realize what they have and sell them underpriced
personally fiesta ware scares me, if only somewhat. because fiesta ware is more likely to chip or scrape the glaze if its used as intended, and you ingest that, which then wreaks havoc on your innards until you figure out what happened.
I inherited some classic Fiestaware. The wonderful combination of lead paint with uranium glaze. For dishes. They ate and drank out of this stuff!!! But it sure is pretty.
yoooooooo nilered rocks
Well this is nilered glass, but nilered probably makes rocks aswell
Finally, some actually good reaction content!
Love to see it. Keep up the great work, my dude!
Thanks so much!!
Nigel usually handles most syntheses he does in his fumehood
Generally, flat black or white background means its in his fumehood
Not always
Uranium chemistry from what ive seen in demonstrations tend to be pretty colorful, and often kinda green or yellow or blue.
Metal chemistry tends to be colorful
Also, uranyl nitrate is extremely soluble, and subsequently toxic, and some sources say it can absorbed through skin. Some say absorption isnt significant, but skin contamination is still significant.
The danger is still ingestion, but now its really really solible and will dissolve into the sweat on your hands rather than just sitting there
If ionising radiation is so dangerous, why don't scientists put more effort into encouraging people to unionise?
(I'm not sorry)
RUclips randomly reccomended your channel and I'm glad it did. This was great content especially considering your education, background, and expertise in the matter!
Thanks! Welcome aboard!
Depleted uranium actually is used in nuclear weapons just as a tamper instead of core material its density making it well suited to this role coupled with the fact that when bombarded with enough neutrons it too will react
I heard once that the reason why depleted uranium shells are so good at penetrating armour is partially because of the density of depleted uranium, but also because of the way it interacts with the armour itself. A typical steel shell (or pretty much any other metal used in ammunition, for that matter), tends to mushroom out at the front as it passes through armour. Apparently, a depleted uranium shell essentially sharpens itself as it passes through armour instead of mushrooming out.
This is something I heard about maybe once or twice quite a while ago, and I have not researched the topic, so please take the above paragraph with a grain of salt.
It's oblative so sheds the outside off rather than mushrooming, while kind of self sharpening it doesn't really get sharp, however since DU is pyrophoric the dust/fragments auto ignite when in contact with the air. So it's a super dense armour piercing dart that doesn't mushroom out, sets things on fire inside and outside the tank (such as the big autoloaders in the Russian tanks leading to the turret popping off like a high powered party popper.)
@@lukeevans1945 I see. Thanks for the correction and the additional info.
Uranium is also a very hard metal. Not as hard as tungsten, but harder than steel. Though density is mostly what you care about in a penetrator.
@@unknownhours True.
lead is the decay product of Uranium
5:35 I built my own counter from a cheap solder kit for 20 bucks. I found the asphalt outside my flat is about 4 times more radioactive than the woods around it I was looking into building a gamma ray spectrometer, but the crystal alone would come in at hundreds of money units. Certainly not the price range for me for something just to toy around with.
36:40 most cheap counters that offer measurements in Sv/h or similar are calibrated to specific materials, like uranium. So when it detects some amount of particles, it assumes those particles to be in proportion as per the calibration material.
had my curiosity took hold and looked up the geiger counter used (PRM-9000) and found its $680usd and is calibrated to cesium-137
They are probably using phosphogypsum in the ashphalt, that is why it is radioactive.
I am delighted to hear an expert opine that NileRed really IS as meticulous as he seems to be in all his videos. I have enjoyed Nile's content for years, and it always seemed to me that he was taking reasonable precautions.
Just wanted to say that I LOVE your use of "opine" here. As an English major, it made me nerd out 😁
@@raeofsunshine8377 I consumed a dictionary in my youth, and occasionally I regurgitate ostentatious and / or bombastic verbiage ;)
Yes, I have been soundly trounced for my termnity, however I was undeterred and continued with egregious usage of vocabulary.
My opponents were impotently enraged, which delighted me.
( as a side note, my favorite dinosaur is the Thesaurus )
NileRed is my favorite chemist!! My granddaughter and I watch his videos together. I’m so happy he got his new lab. He has the exuberance and fascination of a young person, with the education and knowledge to make chemistry understandable and fun. He also never quits. He is always trying to make whatever he’s doing better.
Thank you for reacting to this! Was realy fun to se you get so excited!.
Thanks!!
Bead shops are a great place to look for modern uranium glass ... or at least that was my experience a couple decades ago. A keen eye is almost as good as a geiger counter. I was even able to procure some within the Berkeley (CA) "nuclear-free zone". Alas, the beads were not free. Even so, a lot less trouble than rolling your own.
What a wonderfully warm, generous reaction. I really enjoyed this.
2:00 I didn't know Uranium, but I did know radium was once very popular, at some time your goods almost cannot be sold unless you claim you have added radium to make it "nuclear". A fun fact is that in some cheap goods, the companies actually lied and no radium was added, so they accidentally protected their customers.
newcomer to your channel here; kudos to you for making this an actual reaction video! Your reactions add a lot to the original video which is what a react video should always strive to be.
Too many people just steal other creators content under the name fair use and don't add anything to the video except laughing along and that really annoys me.
This! Actual add of info, Personal comment/stories, warning when he doesn't know much about the subject, ... and so much more. From a little channel i'm amazed. Actual legitimate good stuff.
This type of reaction video may still fall under copyright misuse, unfortunately. When you watch the entire video in full, it's always a little bit sketchy. I, as a general rule, try to avoid reaction videos that watch the entire source video because it really hurts the original creator. Taking little snippets of revelant material is generally a better practice. This guy does it better than most, though the commentary does consume less of the video duration than the original content, which is, again, risky regarding content protections.
Legal Eagle has a good video regarding this topic. Worth a watch if you're interested.
@@Malicious2013 There should be, at least in theory, absolutely no problem with copyright infringement, at least according to LegalEagle's late September video addressing the systematic theft of content in the Reaction Streamer community. This reaction is about 40% longer in duration than the original video, and with the additional perspective and information added, it can easily be considered transformative, and it was made more than three and a half years after the date of the original upload, which for this period has realized almost 12 million views.
@parasitelights3158 It still uses an unedited full viewing of the original content. That's pretty tough to dispute lol.
Thanks for the extra perspective on his video. I enjoyed watching this through your eyes. Have a good day mate.
20:00 the reason his Uranium compound wasn't fluorescent under the UV light is because most of the UV light was blocked by the glass container.
I love Nile red! I apologize if I haven’t noticed it yet, but have you ever watched Cody , the guy he referenced with the thunder can? He’s awesome and a very worthwhile rabbit hole for reactions
Yeah codyslab is a trip
I heard that the association between radiation and glowimg green originally stems from WW1. They used to paint the watch faces and compasses with a radioactive paint that would glow green at night and in the dim trench light (I think radium). I think many just assumed that anything radioactive glows green. Personally i like the blue more.
It can glow in a variety of colours.
The story you are referring to, is the Radium Girls. An absolute nightmare.
1:54 I'm a scientific glassblower. Uranium glass was actually essential for glass-to-metal seals. Anything with a tungsten filament that needed to be hermetically sealed used a small amount of uranium glass. The development of other metals and other glasses means that is almost not the case now, but it was common for many years and has only fairly recently fallen out of use.
I'm sure on some of the older machines that might be within the nuclear facility, if you find anything with an easy to reach ion gauge or something similar that you might find something. The seal on the tungsten wire tends to look very orange, but getting out a UV torch will still make that glass at the seal glow green if uranium glass was used.
We use boric acid in glassmaking to lower the thermal coefficient of expansion, which reduces strain as the glass cools. That’s how you make old-fashioned pyrex. 1100°C is actually a little cool for borosilicate. The person who taught my wife and I glassblowing used to run the glass furnace up to about 1200°C to "fine" it, and that was a soda lime glass.
Ah Nigel. He is someone who has truly earned his title of “the most dangerous man on RUclips”
Depleted Uranium is used in thermonuclear weapons as a tamper, and the neutrons from the fusion reaction cause it to undergo fission itself, significantly increasing the yield.
This guy does some of the coolest stuff. On NileRed, he has his more serious projects, like making cherry soda out of paint thinner, transparent wood, or bromine (his favorite carcinogen). On NileBlue, he has his more silly projects, like making the world's purest cookie.
NileRed has done some impressive organic and inorganic chemical processes. He'll start with something like Nitrile gloves and end up after numerous reactions with 'grape soda'. Love watching him and he does work in a good lab.
I really enjoyed this reaction; you brought a lot of insight. It's cool when safety-focused people from different disciplines still converge on the same risks and mitigation strategies.
I've been watching NileRed long enough to know that usually when he's showing chemicals outside of containers like with that uranyl nitrate, it's under his fume hood. So you can rest easy on that one, dude.
Also powdered sodium diuranate is the forbidden mac n cheese powder.
It's awesome to see Nigel's science and methods confirmed by an actual expert in the field. Thank you for this video, very entertaining!
I wish Nile did more chemistry related to radioactive materials so you would watch more for this channel XD
What exactly would you want him to do? There's only so much he can do, both from a safety and legal standpoint.
@@AB-80X I mean, whatever is interesting to him? I like all of NileRed stuff; the 'food' related ones are interesting, like Gloves to Grape Soda. But literally anything that strikes his fancy I'd be happy to watch more of.
What do you mean 'safety and legal', you mean copyright strikes? If so, its entirely at the discretion of NileRed. Im not under the impression hes anti-reaction videos, so I don't think there is a high likelihood of any real risk of doing a video from him every so often. Otherwise, Im not so sure what you mean.
I lived near a pottery artist as a kid. She had drawers full of various powders for ceramic glaze. One drawer contained about 10lbs of powdered uranium ore. Makes the bright orange glaze once fired on pottery.
sounds like cancer
21:18 Boric acid is used not for shielding properties, but because it increases the durability of glass. You might recognize borosilicate glassware brand names like "Duran" or "Pyrex" that have been stamped on equipment in both kitchens and chemistry labs, because it is both highly durable and heat resistant.
Pyrex is usually not borosilicate anymore :(
@@RobinTheBot Really? I guess I shouldn't trust their Wikipedia page.
@@HenriFaust It used to be but they have changed to something else which is why if you look, you can find many articles and videos about Pyrex exploding.
He never said it was used for shielding. He said it was used for its neutron absorption in reactors. He never mentioned its use in glass other than saying it was interesting it was used in both
@@RobinTheBot the lab glassware still is, but the USA made consumer-grade stuff is now made of soda-lime glass-much inferior to the borosilicate glass used before.
I really appreciate seeing two knowledgeable people discuss a topic. Chemistry and Nuclear Physics are topics that probably 99% of the population will never know the details of let alone feel like they have any truck with, so seeing a video narrating the process of making uranium glass and having commentary by an expert--and that BOTH videos are so digestible by the layperson--is a really cool window into an otherwise mystical realm that we could never hope to get to. Thanks for sharing!
If you wanna check more about his safety steps and his setup, he has another channel for that called NileBlue. I think he has a cleanup video for this project specifically on there.
30:00 - The reason the one piece broke is because he didn't anneal the glass and bring the temps down gradually. Stresses weren't allowed to be released in the annealing process... and it ripped itself apart.
please do more reactions to nilered/nileblue!!
Or Nilegreen even
I pick up and deliver at the Fiestaware plant in Newell, WV on occasion. I took my radiation detector in there once and it spooked me. Even though they stopped making radioactive dishware decades ago, it's still fairly radioactive for a factory. That side of the factory is now a tourist stop and the gift shop area iirc. Definitely worth checking out if you ever end up along the Ohio River in WV.
I'm not a chemist, but always wonder where the fumes in a fumehood go - surely it's not just vented outside. How are they treated? It must be more sophisticated than something like a carbon filter?
Organic chemist here.
It really depends on what you are working with.
I work with Fluorinated Organophosphate compounds which can be extremely toxic and dangerous, as part of alternative pesticide research. We vent everything though chemical scrubbers. Some hoods use "mechanical" filters that are designed to catch small particles, which you would use in such a case as with NileRed. There are also some chemical scrubbers that can be used in this situation. What setup he uses? Who knows. I'm guessing a mix of HEPA and chem filters.
And lastly, in work where you have low level toxicity and low pollution, you simply vent it outside of the building without any treatment. Fume hoods and their filter systems come in a wide variety of types. Ours are as simple as a caustic scrubbers that will react with the vapours given off and thus neutralizing them.
I once visited a lack working with highly radioactive materials, and the filtration system for their "fume hoods" took up as much space in the building as the rest of the lab...
@@AB-80X Belated thanks for the detailed reply. This is exactly the kind of thing I was wondering.
@@kyrresjbk7876 That's very reassuring 😐. Also interesting too.
It always amazes me that everyone has the same examples for the various levels of exposure. Dental scan, airplane trip, banana, etc. I assume it's from everyone having similar charts when they learned it, but the consistency is still impressive.
Uranium glass is commonly known as Vaseline glass, my mother used to collect it and yes they did make drinking glasses from that material.
I'd like to see you do a reaction to the Radium Girls.. I'm sure there are several educational history based utube videos on them It's an incredibly sad story.
If you are unaware of the story at the turn of the 20th century people liked glow in the dark watches. At the time watch makers painted the face of watches with a radium based paint. To get a very fine point on a paint brush the workers would lick the ends of their brushes. After a year or more at the job their teeth would fall out, or their jaws would break from radiation poisoning. Many would eventually get cancer and die a long painful death.
Vaseline glass is just the name for one of the specific colors of uranium glass, it's the yellower stuff rather than the green or blue
I would love to see more NileRed!
if you ever try out gaming. you should play minecraft with the industrial craft 2 mod (specifically ic2 classic) (its got nuclear reactors in it and theres so many ways you can set up one, its also a late game power source and the best power source)
there's also HBM's nuclear tech mod
bigger reactors and mekanism also do
@@_CDLP stuck on 1.12.2
@@LatvianVideo well yeah, but ic2 is the og though
How about Chernobyl: The Legacy Continues? (needs an old PC though)
“Don’t eat Uranium” (taking notes)
Yeah those affordable Geiger counters are still around ~$100. Also would putting the cool uranium glass in a secondary container filled with water make it shielded enough to say, wear to a rave?
You havent seen how much niles will spend have you?
The amount of radiation from the glass is basically harmless maybe not wear tons of it every day but generally its fine. You can hold blocks of pure uranium in your hand no problem, and the glass has only a fraction. The alpha gets blocked by your upper skin layer
Great video!
Thanks!!
Depleted Uranium is amazing for weapons because not only is it denser than lead meaning you can carry more energy, it also ablates through armor in a very specific way that actually makes it sharper as it goes through, making it more effective with more armor to go through. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of one of those shells.
Nile is truly dedicated to his craft, imo. Seeing a professional be impressed by his standards, safety precautions, and methods of approach is definitely validating of that opinion.
Big fan. You rock ❤
I think it's recommended to keep U-rocks away from any big fans, but I'm not too sure about that
@@wessltov "Big fan meet rock, big fan go boom. That no good." - here, a translation for Iamjustnishant in case they need it :P
I was born in the late 60s and came of age before the end of the Cold War. The ever present threat of USSR nuclear bombs falling out of the sky was a low level but constant fear during my childhood.
Once the internet was born I found tons of information online about all things nuclear that wasn't easily accessible pre-internet.
Because of this easy access, over the past couple of decades I've sucked up every bit of information I can find about nuclear energy and radioactivity: from radium dials on watches to the nuclear fusion explosions kept in check by gravity that we call stars.
Discovering your channel makes me super happy. Seeing another content creator "playing" with uranium blows my Cold War influenced mind.
I'm really excited to have found your channel and now Nile's. Science was not cool for girls when I grew up and I crave fact based information sources that are easy to understand.
So thanks! I think a day of binge watching your content is in my immediate future.
For a reference, here are the temps/targets I use when doing fusing and slumping art glass: (I work with System 96 glass, so garget temps will vary.)
from Room Temp to about 1,000 Deg F/357.8 Deg C - Fragile zone. Solid glass in this range is subject to thermal shock and can shatter. Not an issue for making powder into glass.
960 Deg F/515.6 Deg C - Soak target temp to allow glass to relax and anneal, so it won't likely shatter on it's own.
1250 Deg F/676.7 Deg C - Soak target Temp when ramping up temperature. Also edge of plastic/fluid state where glass is soft and taffy like.
1350 Deg F/723.3 Deg C - Soak target temp for slumping panes of glass into molds.
1400 Deg F/760.0 Deg C - Soak Target Temp for making smaller bits of glass stick together (Fusing). At this temp, glass retains it's sharp edges and corners.
1450 Deg F/787.8 Deg C - Soak Target Temp for Fusing. Used to soften the edges and corners, but still leave them intact.
1500 Deg F/815.6 Deg C - Soak Target Temp for Fusing. Used to take glass near puddle like. All edges and corners melt off and round out due to surface tension.
1700 Deg F/926.7 Deg C - Soak Target Temp for Casting glass in a mold. Mostly used for solid chunks being melted down inside the mold.
2300 Deg F/1260 Deg C - Target temp for melting glass, especially for "glory hole" kilns. This is the temp for pouring glass into a mold.
The kiln I have can only go up to 1700 Deg F, because it's a small kiln used for slumping and fusing glass. I have ramped it that high in an attempt to make glass spacers for a fountain I never finished. I don't know how fluid Glass blowers need their glass to be, but I assume it's somewhere between 1700 Deg F and 2300 Deg F. (I'm being lazy and not looking it up.) For what Nile needs, I think he needed to go hotter. I don't remember what I posted in his video when I watched it a while ago. The nice thing is he doesn't need to slowly ramp up the temperature in the kiln he's using because he's working with powder and not solid glass chunks. HOWEVER, he will have to SLOWLY ramp down the temperature and probably have a few soak holds to anneal the glass so it won't just shatter. Don't remember if he did that. Luckily, they're smallish pieces, so he can be a little aggressive with the cool down. Larger pieces have to go as slow as you can and then even slower to keep the temperature equalized in the piece.
EDIT: If you want to see if there is stress in the glass (from how it was created), you need a light table and two pieces of polarized plastic. Place one polarized sheet on the light table. Place the glass piece on top of it. Then place the other polarized piece on top and turn the top piece (90 Degrees) until the area around the glass piece is black. The light will go through the glass and be visible. Any stresses in the glass will show up as lines and the cloudier the piece, the more stress it has and likely to break. However, Tempered Glass uses this stress against itself to make the glass incredibly strong and likely to break into cubes instead of shards when it does break.
I'm hindsight it's ridiculously obvious that a hairline fracture in glass would polarize light, but I would never have thought of it. Physics is so damn cool.
NileRed is great! Thank YOU for YOUR notes, twas quite interesting.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I would love to see more nilered reactions, i think this is the only nuclear related video he has done but he has a lot of other interesting projects like "turning paint thinner into cherry soda"
There is his video on his NileBlue channel where he cleans up the waste from this video's project. Could be interesting to see how well that tracks with the standards in the industry.
thanks for talking professionally about this enthusiasts! this is very needed in youtube
The GMC-500+ Is much better than the 320. But yeah those are good dosimeters.
What's interesting though is that there are still many uranium products around, Uranium Garden Gnomes, Uranium glass, uranium ceramics, yellowcake (raw uranium core - no not edible). Its always facinating how much we as humans take things go crazy with it, then go crazy controlling it, then go crazy again trying to explain it is safe to do it again and no one wants it after that.
27:16 a dust cloud is visible. Certainly hope that Nile used a mask and/or fume hood with a filter
Day 28 of asking if Mr Folse likes beans even though he already answered
HEY! Love the shoutout to Cody’s Lab. Awesome channel. Cody is a great guy.
you are literally finding every science/comparison youtuber I watch! XD glad to see the youtubers I find all seem to be more than aware of each other
I love how in depth he goes in his videos.
it's no longer on youtube but about 8 years ago there was a youtuber who made yellow cake...would have loved to see you react to that video.
This was really interesting to watch, I'm glad to have gotten the chance to learn some more!
Awesome video. Thanks for taking the time to post.
7:23 OMG Müller shoutout!!!
Not only Geiger geting the credit lol
I have NEVER heard this about smoking. Not for doctors, nay sayers, nagging Nellies, etc. Thank you so much for enlightening me on this additional risk from smoking. I’m genuinely grateful!
It’s not particularly related to this video, but have you heard of the Okla mine nuclear reactor? I think it is one of the most fascinating cases of nuclear criticality I have read.
31:40 To anneal glass, it is necessary to heat it to its annealing temperature, at which its viscosity, η, drops to 1013 Poise (1013 dyne-second/cm²).[2] For most kinds of glass, this annealing temperature is in the range of 454-482 °C (850-900 °F)[citation needed], and is the so-called stress-relief point or annealing point of the glass. At such a viscosity, the glass is still too hard for significant external deformation without breaking, but it is soft enough to relax internal strains by microscopic flow in response to the intense stresses they introduce internally. The piece then heat-soaks until its temperature is even throughout and the stress relaxation is adequate. The time necessary for this step varies depending on the type of glass and its maximum thickness. The glass then is permitted to cool at a predetermined rate until its temperature passes the strain point (η = 1014.5 Poise)[citation needed], below which even microscopic internal flow effectively stops and annealing stops with it. It then is safe to cool the product to room temperature at a rate limited by the heat capacity, thickness, thermal conductivity, and thermal expansion coefficient of the glass. After annealing is complete the material can be cut to size, drilled, or polished without risk of its internal stresses shattering it.
I thik the green glow myth also comes from radium and tritium radioluminescense as green is the brightest and most common color used with zinc sulfide being ideal for the purpose. I wonder if if a self illuminating phosphorescent form of uranium glass that illuminates itself with charged particles is possible. Like a self glowing crystal that doesn't need a phospor coating.
11:10 Do you have a reference for that? With some googling I didn't really find anything relevant other than the IAEA publication "One Decade After Chernobyl" which mentioned that the "Health Effects" project tested lead levels in children of contaminated villages, based on concerns about possible lead poisoning voiced local physicians and because "lead poisoning was a concern of many parents as a result of potential emission of materials dumped on the reactor", but they found that "Children in all villages had blood lead levels that were generally lower than those normally found in western Europe and the USA."
Eating out of it isn't too bad, microscopic glass particles will just pass on through. It's when you breathe the particles in that you start having real problems, because they get stuck in your lungs. This is the same problem that occurs with cigarettes, as the mineral fertilizer used in fields is contaminated by lead-210 and polonium-210. The same fertilizer is used to grow food in the USA, by the way, but food doesn't normally get trapped in your lungs like tobacco tar.
I used to drive a Tractor Trailer out in California one day south of Los Angeles somewhere I can't remember exactly on an exit ramp I found a huge pile of yellow powder apparently dumped from a bulk tanker driver I knew to call the Haz Mat emergency phone number I told the operator lady whom answered it looks to be unnaturally a very strong yellow I don't know if it's yellow cake refined uranium or if it's paint pigment I parked at the truck stop and watched as a vaccum truck showed up with a loud speaker warning people to avoid breathing the material the haz mat operator tryed to assure me it wasn't yellow cake uranium that nothing of the sort was in California as a resource being mined & trucked in such a manor. Yet they were careful to warn people to stay away & not breath it i suspect it likely was either chemicals or paint pigment in bulk it was strange that people were risking driving over this huge pile of yellow powder with only myself knowing to call hazmat LoL people are so dumb
Uranium glass was produced simply as another color of glass. Uranium salts were mixed into glass to create particular yellow colors in natural light, just like other metals' salts would produce other specific colors. The fluorescence of the glass was a quality that wasn't apparent to people until years later when UV lights became available.
Deleted uranium is super dense, which is why it's used in munitions. Heavy small rounds impart more force via kinetic energy transfer
BTW, Metals (and their oxides, et al) are added in TINY AMOUNTS to color glass. Window Glass has a little bit of Iron in it to give it that clear look, but the edges will always be a bit green. I think Gold makes glass red, and I don't remember the other color combinations. I just buy my glass in sheets already colored.
In plant GMO they use use a tiny "shotgun" loaded with nano-size gold mixed in water and the genetic material they want to transfer, since gold is not going to react with the samples or host plant. That nano solution is indeed red!
You can easily find vintage & antique uranium glass bowls, dishes, cake plates, custard dishes, candle holders, cups, mugs, even glass lamps, etc. etc. at thrift stores.
4:07 i heard urinal nitrate. How do you say the ion form of uranium?
uranyl, pronounced exactly how you heard
i remember asking myself "what would an actual nuclear engineer say to this video?" upon watching it originally
thank you for appeasing my curiosity
Also he has a video on the cleanup process behind this experiment, it was interesting to see everything that went into it and that he properly handles all the waste and contaminated equipment
I grew up back in the 70's in Crystal River Fl and I remember going through the nuclear plant while under construction on a school feild trip. We also were able to tour the 2 coal fired plants as well. (it was a different time! I can't imagine that being allowed today!!!). A few years later we were given a tour through the operating nuc plants control room (again, can't imagine that today!!!). I lived within the 5 mile "Kill Zone" and I remember the sirens were at the end of our road... Pointed away from us 🙂We used to kid out of towners that we glowed at night ;-) I remember some of the best fishing ever at the warm water outlet of the plant!!! Red fish especially enjoyed the warm water!!! Later on they built 2 more larger coal plants and had cooling towers for them, most people thought they were for the nuc plant, but they weren't... I was able to tour their costruction as well and remember hollaring in the tower and how it echoed ;-) Also got to stand in the smoke stack b4 they put the guts in it and was amazed at how much it swayed in the wind!!!(It was 600' tall and my friend (who eventually wound up running the nuc plant) asked if I wanted to go up in the elevator to the top of the stack... NOOOO was my answer ;+) Great video sir!!!
Uranium glass can still be found in antique shops. You can find the clear, lime-green glass as well as (usually marbles) a greenish, petroleum jelly looking glass. These, too, are fluorescent under UV.
He mentioned that the sand on the Nuclear Bomb test sites melted from the heat. Fun fact, the molten Sand even got its own name "Trinitite". People were so interested in this stuff that the Goverment made a Law that prohibits the collection of it. So every bit of Trinitite that is available today was collected before they made the Law.
Uranium was commonly used as a glaze in making tiles prior to around 1940. Lots of old houses will still have these, and they are slightly radioactive.
I love this video and that video. I have a piece of Uranium(U, 92) glass from the 1950s that I think has Uranium Dioxide as the special sauce. It is an ashtray. It is a yellow-green color and is called Vaseline Uranium Glass. It doesn't have a seam of any kind and it fluoresces just like his and gives Geiger/Dosimiters plenty to talk about. I don't have a proper display case so I have it wrapped in the foam it came in. I'm 70s born 80s kid and when I was a child every time you heard about Radiation it was just Uranium(U, 92) that was always the element mentioned. U is what gave some superheroes their powers. Also, not many people knew about the unnatural elements to follow starting with Neptunium(Np, 93) and Plutonium(Pu, 94) If Uranium is the murderer of the Periodic Table Plutonium is a Hannibal Lector Crazed Serial Killer. Plutonium is 1 of, if not the only element that can spontaneously undergo fusion/fission with no reason and no warning.
Uranium glass is a staple in scientific glass blowing shops, because it gives a tight seal with metal, such as you would want around electrodes extending from an external power supply into a vacuum chamber.