> I mean, if you’re going to dispute my point without providing any evidence

Pure Americium-241 is extremely radioactive 0.0000045 grams of the stuff puts off useful amounts of radiation for smoke detectors, it’s half life is also 432 years.

As an alpha emitter it’s not that bad to stand next to but internally it doesn’t take much to be lethal.

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TheSpiceIsLife 2 days ago | parent [-]

Awesome. So how does one go about diverting this from nuclear waste storage to the diet of average citizens, as an act of terrorism?

Also, I don’t know how to gauge “useful amounts of radiation for smoke detectors”.

α-particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper.

	▲	Retric a day ago \| parent [-]
		> diverting this from nuclear waste storage This is a manufactured product not waste from a nuclear reactor. We use it because it’s an alpha emitter, there’s harder to shield material with similar half lives they are just less useful. I bring this up because longer half lives don’t mean safety. If you’re looking for a weapon, salted nukes are the stuff of nightmares if they use something with a month long half life or several hundred years. > I don’t know how to gauge And that’s the issue here, you need to do some more research before making such statements.