Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames Fan, Ph.D.
I don't have expertise in the uranium issue as it is outside of my training. But your comment about phosphorescence is extremely ill-informed.
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From our friends at Wiki - and the beat a dead horse. Tritum (that glowing stuff in your watch) is radioactive and does give off an isotope. It is also controlled material (it is used to make big bangs).
Physics
Tritium illumination is the use of gaseous
tritium, a radioactive
isotope of
hydrogen, to create visible light. Tritium emits
electrons through
beta decay, and when they interact with a phosphor material,
fluorescent light is created, a process called
radioluminescence.
The tritium in a gaseous tritium light source undergoes
beta decay, releasing electrons which cause the phosphor layer to
fluoresce. Being an unstable isotope with a
half-life of about 12.32 years, tritium loses half its brightness in that period.
Legal issues
Because tritium in particular is an integral part of certain
thermonuclear devices (though in quantities several thousand[
citation needed] times larger than that in a keychain), consumer and safety devices containing tritium for use in the United States are subject to certain possession, resale, disposal, and use restrictions.