anyone know of a merchant offering tritium glowsticks(like these from the Register) for international ordering (or is there a helpful soul out there in the UK? If so let me know where to paypal funds....)

The website listed on that article ships internationally.
http://www.cashncarrion.co.uk/cnb/shop/cashncarrion?op=catalogue-products-null&prodCategoryID=19

In general yes, but specifically not the glowsticks "Remember, however that we can only ship the Glowring to the UK - sorry to all our radiation-starved international customers. ®"

Probably aginst some IAEA regulation; might be that if you had 10 gzillion of them you could boost a nuculear device to higher yeilds

They don't ship the glowsticks internationally. IIRC it was the IAEA who told them to stop. I don't think you mess with the IAEA.

Peter

Ahh, I see. Can these things be legal given that they are firing out radiation?

Most likely the actual radiation is caught and transformed to the light seen in something akin to the phosfor layer in a flourescent light. Anyway it's a fairly weak beta emitter, and it doesn't travel far in air, and is shielded by most anything. some interesting reading, pdf.It's long been used for watch/clock handles and weapon sights The people painting the watch handles, licking the brush tip to sharpen it, didn't do to well, but otherwise tritium is fairly harmless as far as radioactive things goes..

Edit: fixed the link -wfaulk

Still... if one were to shatter and the insides inhaled etc, would that not result in beta radiation in the lungs? I'd not like that much.

Beta radioactive particles in the lungs wouldn't be a major issue (in small quantities) as much of the radiation would have enough energy to escape through the tissue. Alpha particles on the other hand would just get caught.

There was an article in the local paper a year back that made me laugh.

Firstly a large front page story about a dawn raid on a local house, dozens of armed police offficers, man dragged out and whisked away, men in white suits come in and strip the house bare. Lots of activity.

Interviews with locals, ranging from "nice chap, helped repair my car once" to "he's a bit weird, keeps himself to himself, doesn't seem to have a job" etc.

Anyway, about a week later they have an interview with him - he was taken to Paddington Green (high security police station in London) and interviewed for a long time, asking about anything and everything. Then they released him and I think he had to beg for a train ticket home.

He said that on return from a coach trip to France a couple of weeks earlier everybody was ordered off and taken away before being let back on a bit later. He suspects there were radiation detectors at the port and the alarms went off. When they didn't find anything they must have done background checks on the passengers and turned up him. Apparently he was an engineer for Boeing and worked on some very sensitive projects in the US for quite a while (hence no job - must have been good money). That was presumably enough for the police! Anyway, must be some red faces from the neighbours when he read the papers...

Gareth

You can get them on Ebay, but would you want something radioactive in your pocket purchase fron an online auction house made by the lowest bidder in a back world country.

The professor who taught radiation protection lab I took had this way of putting things in perspective (we were quite uneasy about the souces littering the benches all around): he placed a bag of white, crystaline powder in detection chamber; the counter went wild. What was it? Potasium chloride, containing approximately amount of potasium a person's body (mostly skeleton) contains. What was counted was decay of K-40, a natural isotope of potasium (long-lived beta emiter). The activity in an average person's body is about 5 kBq (not much, but that is within us).