Talk:Americium-241

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Hazards[edit]

I have serious concerns about the accuracy of this section. It doesn't have references to support all of its claims, and the three references it does have are incomplete (one is an old book in German, so I have no way to verify it).

First Alert (smoke detector manufacturer) claims that

Americium 241 is harmless outside the body because the radiation it emits is too weak to penetrate human skin. Swallowing Americium—even though this is not recommended—is also considered harmless. In known cases where the element was consumed, the substance passed through the gastrointestinal tract and out of the body without leaving any detectable contamination. [1]

Another page says

The radiation from exposure to americium is the primary cause of health effects from absorbed americium. Americium moves rapidly through the body after uptake and is concentrated within the bones for a long period of time. During this storage americium will slowly decay and release radioactive particles and rays. These rays can cause alteration of genetic materials and bone cancers.
Damage to organs due to americium exposure is highly unlikely for humans, because americium is accumulated in organs only a short period of time. [2]

First Alert isn't neutral, but neither of these statements align with the dire claims in this article. Perhaps just rewording some things to be clear about the amounts of Am-241 in a smoke detector would suffice. StevenBell (talk) 20:14, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

First Alert are talking nonsense. There are clear, well-known risks from swallowing alpha emitters, which is what Americium 241 is. There is also a risk from inhaling alpha emitters as dust. They also don't address the question of absorption in the body, which poses a further risk, nor do they address the question of bioaccumulation, which is when the body cannot remove a substance and instead remains in the body, and accumulates as the person is exposed to more of the material.

Whether the risk is low or not, it is certainly not harmless, as First Alert claim. Andrewk7 (talk) 12:01, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Americium 241 decay process[edit]

What is the americium 241 decay proces? İs it starts itselfs? How can i stop it? 88.245.98.219 (talk) 05:30, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As stated in the article, americium-241 almost always decays by alpha emission to neptunium-237. Radioactive decay is a stochastic process, meaning that at any time, an atom can spontaneously decay, and there's no such thing as "stopping" it from happening. ComplexRational (talk) 16:07, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The only way to stop americium-241 from being radioactive would be to change the fundamental physical properties of the universe. This is not currently feasible. :-) It would also cause some elements that are currently stable to become radioactive, along with other disastrous effects, so the net benefit would be questionable. If you would be interested in reading some science fiction which explores this, you might try Isaac Asimov's book The Gods Themselves. BunsenH (talk) 16:44, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Possible new application[edit]

Hi, I accidentally invented a new type of thruster which uses 241Am and 4He inside a sealed vacuum tube like device filled with low pressure gas. The idea here is to use a thin window like HOPG which unlike Be does not generate neutrons. If the 241Am source is biased at a high voltage then a percentage of the alpha particles are accelerated and thus generate unidirectional thrust. This idea is actually not new but the use of UV pulsed emitters or other methods to bias the PG at its highest flux point required waiting until UV lasers and diode emitters became commercially available. I believe there is prior art dating from the early 1940s but wasn't aware of this when working on the devices. NASA have developed a very similar device using direct emission in much the same way but this can be used in room air. Actually called it the "Zetadrive" purely because it may or may not be based on the thrusters used on another aircraft. 78.111.198.3 (talk) 06:51, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Has this possible application been published in any reliable sources? If it is entirely your doing and no published sources exist, it is considered original research and is not suitable for Wikipedia. ^Complex/_Rational 15:50, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]