I have, simply by asking, gotten an ongoing supply of lead "pigs" from the nuclear medicine department at the hospital where I work. These are the containers that things like I 131 and other isotopes come packed in. Does anyone know the composition of these? Pure lead? They seem kind of hard for pure lead. The price is right, but I'm not sure what I'm starting with.

I got my answer by calling Mallinkrodt, the isotope supplier. These are 97% lead, 3% antimony. No tin, apparantly. If any of you know someone in a nuclear medicine department, it may pay you to ask after these.

add 1% tin to them pour a boolit let it sit for 2 weeks and do a hardness test.
you should be real close to ww's. if waaaay softer then they are pure lead and you have some lead with a very small amount of tin in it.

What exactly happens to lead when it is bombarded by radioactivity?

quote:

Originally posted by 303Guy:
What exactly happens to lead when it is bombarded by radioactivity?

I think it depends on what type of radiation hits the lead:
http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q44.html

If the lead box has had the radioactive material removed, the lead itself would not be radioactive nor dangerous in any way different than usual/common lead.

I have a whole big pile of the pigs myself from my days in the lab. I cast some bullets for my 30-30 and they shot just fine. They are not radioactive (I’ve confirmed with a number of Geiger counters for all particle and gamma emission) and make perfectly good bullets. I was never able to get the full composition even talking with the company distributing them but that was many years ago so thanks Marty for ferreting that information out. Thanks
Paul

There was a story going around in the early 60s about a Navy cargo ship that one of the first Navy NUKE reactors on it (befor subs had them). It was a test project. In the 60s they broke up the ship for scrap and the lead shielding was being melted down and the workers were "bitting the the big one". Story goes that the lead had been harden with a high content of arsenic.

I got a really funny email back when I asked the local hospital if I could have theirs...
they did not have any by the way.
dmw