Turn Mercury into Gold Cheaply?

ben m said:
You're making gold out of 198Hg, not natural mercury; it's only 10% of natural mercury. So you ran your 198Hg through an isotope separation plant, and isotope separation is expensive. Physics experiments sometimes use large quantities of unusual isotopes; separation typically costs $80,000/kg---more than gold costs to begin with!
Click to expand...

Here's a close example (6 MeV gamma) for a radioactive source produced in cooling water:

"...16N produced in the cooling water..."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...9cb784327f2d695dbc916640abbf5c3d&searchtype=a

So I'm thinking there could still be another cheap source closer to 7 MeV.

"Gamma rays from radioactive decay commonly have energies of a few hundred keV, and almost always less than 10 MeV"

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

If you convert the mercury to gold first then separate it out with something like this:

http://www.physorg.com/news159098428.html

or this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_transport_reaction
 
Last edited:
tyr_13 said:
Obviously sufficiently cheap gold would be ideal for bullets. Not only do they have a massive kinetic energy wallop, but it's soft enough not to damage barrels, doesn't corrode the parts, and isn't nearly as toxic as the other contenders, lead and depleted uranium.
Click to expand...

Good for shooting were-rabbits too. '24 carrots!'
 
tyr_13 said:
Obviously sufficiently cheap gold would be ideal for bullets. Not only do they have a massive kinetic energy wallop, but it's soft enough not to damage barrels, doesn't corrode the parts, and isn't nearly as toxic as the other contenders, lead and depleted uranium.
Click to expand...

Pure gold? Probably not. It would distort so much during firing that I suspect you'd get fouling of the lands, and long-distance accuracy would probably suffer.

Also, for the same bullet size you'd get twice the mass as lead, but for the same muzzle velocity you'd get twice the recoil. And you'd almost certainly need a bigger powder charge.

Finally, werewolves don't respond to gold bullets.
 
WhatRoughBeast said:
Also, for the same bullet size you'd get twice the mass as lead, but for the same muzzle velocity you'd get twice the recoil. And you'd almost certainly need a bigger powder charge.
Click to expand...

Why would you use the same bullet size? Why not stick with the same bullet mass? Then the recoil is identical for the same muzzle velocity.
 
WhatRoughBeast said:
Pure gold? Probably not. It would distort so much during firing that I suspect you'd get fouling of the lands, and long-distance accuracy would probably suffer.

Also, for the same bullet size you'd get twice the mass as lead, but for the same muzzle velocity you'd get twice the recoil. And you'd almost certainly need a bigger powder charge.

Finally, werewolves don't respond to gold bullets.
Click to expand...

Pure gold is closer to clay like than lead, so I wouldn't suggest it either. You're right, the lands and valleys would quickly fill and all rifling benefits would be lost. But obviously there a plenty of alloys that are mostly gold that would work better.

While there is no reason to stick to the same sized bullets as Zig mentioned, just halving the length would work for many, twice the recoil of some rounds wouldn't be a problem for many people. Twice the recoil of 5.56 isn't very bad. Twice the recoil for 12 gauge 3" slugs? Yeah, that might go through some parts. But just like with +P loads, gun makers would quickly adjust it's parts to fit the new, harder on the gun, loads.

What a fun thought experiment this is.
 
There is also the fact that most people wouldn't go near anything that's known to be irradiated (regardless of the fact that it is harmless now), so your gold would be more expensive and less likely to be bought.

Its nice to know it IS possible though, I've always liked the fact that one of the main goals of alchemy, transmutation, is achievable trough modern science.
Unpractical, yes. Far more expensive than it's worth, yes. But it IS possible.
 
Ziggurat said:
Why would you use the same bullet size? Why not stick with the same bullet mass? Then the recoil is identical for the same muzzle velocity.
Click to expand...

Look at any rifle bullet. Most of the volume is in the casing, not the bullet, so going to a smaller (gold) bullet wouldn't change much. You'd get somewhat better long range accuracy due to the higher mass/drag ratio, but I doubt much. And stopping power (a matter of fierce debate in some circles) seems likely to decrease with decreasing projectile size. Keeping the mass the same would, all else being equal, allow a 30% reduction in bore diameter, but you'd still need the same powder charge, so the casing size would remain about the same, and the barrel mass would still need to be about the same to absorb heat during prolonged firing.

So ammunition weight wouldn't change much, nor would weapon weight. Long range performance would increase, but stopping power might decrease. I don't see any pbvious game-changers from going on the gold standard.

And it still wouldn't help with the werewolf problem.
 
WhatRoughBeast said:
Look at any rifle bullet. Most of the volume is in the casing, not the bullet, so going to a smaller (gold) bullet wouldn't change much. You'd get somewhat better long range accuracy due to the higher mass/drag ratio, but I doubt much. And stopping power (a matter of fierce debate in some circles) seems likely to decrease with decreasing projectile size. Keeping the mass the same would, all else being equal, allow a 30% reduction in bore diameter, but you'd still need the same powder charge, so the casing size would remain about the same, and the barrel mass would still need to be about the same to absorb heat during prolonged firing.

So ammunition weight wouldn't change much, nor would weapon weight. Long range performance would increase, but stopping power might decrease. I don't see any pbvious game-changers from going on the gold standard.

And it still wouldn't help with the werewolf problem.
Click to expand...

I don't believe you've thought this out very well. First of all, not all guns are long arms. Hand gun rounds would indeed gain through the greater kinetic load against soft targets. One way to gain in foot pounds of force on target is too increase the speed of the projectile, but another is to increase mass. a hollow point .45 ACP with a third more mass? I bet it would sell, and probably even work. Remember, .500 nitro and .500 S&W sell.

And man portable weapons aren't the only guns either. .50 BFG with a third more mass? Hell yes.
 
tyr_13 said:
I don't believe you've thought this out very well. First of all, not all guns are long arms. Hand gun rounds would indeed gain through the greater kinetic load against soft targets. One way to gain in foot pounds of force on target is too increase the speed of the projectile, but another is to increase mass. a hollow point .45 ACP with a third more mass? I bet it would sell, and probably even work. Remember, .500 nitro and .500 S&W sell.

And man portable weapons aren't the only guns either. .50 BFG with a third more mass? Hell yes.
Click to expand...

If you look carefully at my post, you will see that I was responding to Ziggurat. And his question was "Why not keep the bullet mass the same?" And that is what I was discussing.

As for the merits of increasing handgun rounds mass, well, you can do it now. A tungsten core, rather than lead, would work just fine. Of course, to maintain velocity you have to increase powder charge, and as a first approximation chamber/barrel pressure and recoil will all go up appropriately.

Shrug. Get a Desert Eagle.
 
WhatRoughBeast said:
So ammunition weight wouldn't change much, nor would weapon weight. Long range performance would increase, but stopping power might decrease. I don't see any pbvious game-changers from going on the gold standard.
Click to expand...

I don't think it would be a game changer. But it would solve a problem, namely the environmental contamination of lead. Guns would have to adjust to take proper advantage of that change, and the shooting characteristics might not be much different at the end of the day, but that's fine.

And it still wouldn't help with the werewolf problem.
Click to expand...

I don't know about that. I mean, have people really tried gold bullets on werewolves? I suspect that silver is the metal of choice merely because it's been the cheapest and most readily available of the noble metals. I bet gold and platinum would both get the job done, just not at a reasonable cost right now.
 
Ziggurat said:
I don't think it would be a game changer. But it would solve a problem, namely the environmental contamination of lead. Guns would have to adjust to take proper advantage of that change, and the shooting characteristics might not be much different at the end of the day, but that's fine.
Click to expand...

Actually, the US military is way ahead of you, having adopted a "green" round
http://www.thegunzone.com/green-ammo.html. As I recall, the core is powdered tungsten/powdered nylon, but I may be wrong.
 
7up said:
F(p, γ)O reaction generates
gammas at energies of 6.13,
6.92 and 7.12MeV

http://www.stfc.ac.uk/resources/pdf/sellinpres30609.pdf
Click to expand...

7up, I don't think you understand. The F(p,gamma) reaction is something you do at an accelerator. You make a beam of protons, shoot them at a fluorine-rich target. Some of the protons (not all, not most) interact with the fluorine nuclei; the rest just cruise to a stop via ionization energy loss. Some (not most, not all) of the reactions will be F(p,gamma)---others will be F(p,n) and F(p,2n) and whatnot. Some of the F(p,gamma) reactions will include high-energy photons; there are many cascades which will send out multiple lower-energy photons instead.

Remember when we were calculating how much accelerator-running energy (at $0.1/kWh) it takes to make a gamma-ray photon at an electron accelerator? That was a comparatively cheap way to make high energy gammas. This thing you're proposing is an expensive way to make high-energy gammas.

You are not going to find a cheaper one; gamma irradiation (for: sterilization, weld inspection, cargo scanning, etc.) is a mature industry employing lots of nuclear and accelerator physicists. When they want high-energy gamma rays, they crank up the electron linac and fork over the energy bill, because that's the best way to do it. And it's good enough to make weld scanning, etc., viable---it's not good enough to make cheap gold out of lead.

( If you have a proton accelerator, you'd be better off shooting it directly at a mercury target and hoping for 198Hg(p,2n). )
 
ben m said:
When they want high-energy gamma rays, they crank up the electron linac and fork over the energy bill, because that's the best way to do it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for explaining the (p, gamma) notation.

As a controlled source of on-demand gammas nothing is cheaper.

Then for uncontrolled source how about nuclear byproducts that give off gamma rays?

Then separate the gold using cheaper new way of extracting:

http://www.physorg.com/news159098428.html

or this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemica...sport_reaction
 
Hindmost said:
Probably never. A nuke plant brings in over 300 million dollars in revenue a year. The amount of gold that would be produced would be very small due to the nature of the reactions...plus there would be radioactive byproducts and processing that would be expensive. Compared with normal revenue, it would help much. Plus, mercury and reactors are a bad combination. The reactor plant is a mercury exclusion area as it will amalgamate with essentially any metal and make is softer...which would be bad. Its why dentists use the stuff.
Click to expand...

If mercury is placed outside the exclusion area so that it can't amalgamate with the metal but is still unshielded from some gamma rays, since it is economical to extract high-priced elements like shown in quotes below, then would it be economical to recover gold from mercury?

"Silver is produced as result of nuclear fission in small amounts (approximately 0.1 %). Because of this, extraction of silver from highly radioactive fission products would be uneconomical, but when recovered with palladium, rhodium and ruthenium (price of silver in 2005: about 200 €/kg, rhodium and ruthenium: about 300,000 €/kg) the economics change substantially. Silver becomes a byproduct of platinoid metal recovery from fission waste."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Silver
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom