Comment by dynm
1 month ago
Fun fact: Americans are seemingly allowed to own up to 1.5 kg of yellowcake. (That's pure uranium, refined from uranium ore, but not enriched to extract the 0.7% U-235 from the 99.3% U-238.)
Citation: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part040/p...
> That's pure uranium,
Not exactly.
Yellowcake is about 80% uranium oxide:
"Triuranium octoxide (U3O8), the most stable uranium oxide; yellowcake typically contains 70 to 90 percent triuranium octoxide)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_oxide
The atomic weight of Uranium is 238; the atomic weight of Oxygen is 16. By weight, Triuranium octoxide is ~84% Uranium. Even if you're only counting the uranium in the Triuranium octoxide, that's still 60+% of the total mass coming from Uranium Atoms. I'd take that purity any day.
purity invites gradation; 'pure' does not.
United Nuclear has it for sale. No more dangerous than ore samples unless you cut a line and snort it.
Bob Lazar's company. That's kinda cool.
Yeah and you can even buy it directly online. https://unitednuclear.com/restricted-to-ups-only-c-105_87/ye...
Oh no, don’t link United Nuclear! To paraphrase an xkcd: “it’s like rickrolling, but the victim’s stuck all day”
According to that link that's for dispersible form (gas, powder) – it's up to 7kg in solid form ¯\_(ツ)_/¯