Re: Osmium 187

["Franz Schoenhofer" <franz.schoenhofer@CHELLO.AT>]

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

Von: Bjorn Cedervall <bcradsafers@HOTMAIL.COM>

An: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>

Datum: Donnerstag, 11. Juli 2002 18:23

Betreff: Osmium 187





>Found the following while browsing:

>

>"In September 1993, Lev Savenkov, a vice mayor of the city, was caught on

>the Finnish border with 8 grams of osmium-187, used to make pen points and

>electric light filaments, estimated by customs to be worth about $500,000."

>

>Wonder if anyone can explain:

>1. Why Os-187? It is only about 2 % of the stable forms (according to

>http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Os/isot.html

>

>the most important stable isotopes are Os-192 and Os-190).

>2. I find a bunch of sites related to smuggling, nuclear materials etc.

Here

>is one example:http://english.pravda.ru/society/2001/12/28/24690.html

>While it is easy to understand why someone would like to steal it, I still

>don't get the connection with this particular isotope. Why separate it if

>there are other stable isotopes?

>

>Comments?

>

---------------------------------------



Yes, I have a comment.



This Osmium 187 came up a few years ago in some kind of smuggling affair.

The explanation was, that somebody obviously wanted to sell it as a very

valuable and costly pure isotope. Funny, that you would have to separate the

Os-187 to make pen points and electric light filaments. If 8 gramms would be

worth 500 000 US$, what would the price of the pen be and the electric light

bulb? It is true, that Osmium was once used for electric light filaments -

but this is a long, long time ago. The only reminiscence is the trade mark

of a light bulb company - Osram. I am sure they use like everybody else

tungsten - reflected in the trade mark "Tungsram".......



There was given a very simple explanation of the Os-187 and I firmly believe

that I even saw pictures clearly revealing the fraud: The original source

was Cs-137 and the engraving on it was changed very easily to Os-137 by

converting the C to an O (you understand how easy this is) and the 3 to 8

(easy as well).



A lot of "illicit trafficking" has turned out to be a simple fraud. I talk

about incidents which happened in Austria: Highly enriched uranium was

offered by a South African, who carried it in a rucksack. It turned out to

be some crude uranium ore. Persons from Eastern countries offered weapons

grade uranium and wanted to have a prepayment - they could not even deliver

a harmless uranium compound. Others offered to deliver weapons grade

plutonium and in order to prove their ability to deliver it, they gave a

sample - which turned out to be traces of Pu-238 in a Russian smoke

detector - the Western world uses Am-241. All these people have not be tried

on illicit trafficking but on fraud.



Could you give the web-site for your information? I would be interested in

it.



Best regards - Haelsningar



Franz









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