UF6-resistant materials: maraging steel?

[Dick King <king@reasoning.com>]

  Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 10:16:51 -0700
  From: "Richards, David" <david.richards@rfets.gov>
  To: "'radsafe%romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu@inet.rfets.gov'"
  Subject: RE: Give Me You Opinion
  Message-ID: <199901271716.KAA06610@rfgate.rfets.gov>

  It has always been my understanding that Teflon was invented as a liner for
  sewers in New Jersey to prevent plugging. I'm sure that I've seen/read
  DuPont ads that make this assertion.

  DJ Richards
  Hazards Assessment Team Leader
    & Y2k Emergency Preparedness Lead
  Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site
  David.Richards@rfets.gov
  djrichards@earthlink.net

There is a kind of steel called "maraging steel" that is alledged to have two
properties:

  1: a long thin tempered rod made of maraging steel will break to a blunt
     point if it's fatigued and then bent too much.

  2: It's extremely corrosion-resistent.

The first property is desirable for blades used for sport fencing, since if
your opponent's [blunt tipped] blade breaks to a sharp point when he hits you
hard and the point lands too it can ruin your whole day.  Therefore you are
required to use blades made of maraging steel in some tournaments.  The latter
property is not very important for sport fencers, although i did notice that my
maraging blades didn't rust and my carbon-steel blades did [they do, after all,
get poked into sweaty bodies when used as their manufacturer intended].

There's a rumor among fencers that maraging steel was developed to deal with
UF6.  I seem to recall that Saddam Hussein wanted to order a bunch of maraging
steel and that the order was not permitted to go through, and none of us
fencers believed that he wanted to host the mother of all fencing tournaments
;-) .  Is it true that maraging steel resists attack by UF6?  Is it true that
it was developed for this purpose?

-dk
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