New Light Glows For 12 Years

Um, its radio-active.

WARNING
RADIOACTIVE :-D

From the patent application:
"The present invention provides self luminosity by means of a plurality of glass or polymer microspheres containing both a light-emitting phosphor and a radioactive gas."

That gas is going to be Tritium since it is a pure beta emitter and emits very low energy betas. The only real danger with tritium is if it combusts and forms tritiated water which can be a very serious health concern since water is readily absorbed and incorporated in the body. There is a plus side to Tritium contamination, the cure is to drink a lot of water (beer).

Frankly, I'm surprised there's no OMG RADIOACTIVE tag attached to this submission, but I'll wait for the impending comments.

This uses radioactive TRITIUM to glow. While not the most harmful radioactive thing, you certainly don't want to be inhaling massive amounts of tritium gas if one of the containers burst.

Good, very good even. First 12 years and who knows.... in a couple of decennia we can make something glow for as long as the Heechee can.

A 25W incandescent provides about 210 lumens.
http://www.blackenergy.com/store/images/specs/light_levels_lumens.html

You did not mention that this material is radioactive! It is not new technology to make items glow with radioactive material-watches made in the 1920'2 and 1930's used radioactive paints for glow in the dark dials and numerals. The problem is they also poisoned the low paid workers who made them. I wonder what, if any, danger this material poses to its users and its creators?

Because who doesn't want radioactive balls of plastic all over his or her bike?

I won't necessarily write this stuff off yet, but you could've mentioned that it works on the principle of radioactivity in the post.

Because who doesn't want radioactive balls of plastic all over his or her bike?

I won't necessarily write this stuff off yet, but you could've mentioned that it works on the principle of radioactivity in the post.

Wow! At .35 cents for 8.5x11 inches that's about .54 cents per foot or just over 1/2 cent per foot. You could cover almost a 200 square foot surface for a buck. That's pretty cheap!

Perhaps the author meant 35 cents (.35 dollars)?

Is that 1/3 of a cent? or 35 cents ($.35)?

Because who doesn't want radioactive balls?

What is with businesses messing up cents and dollars? I lose faith in humanity whenever I read about someone mixing up $0.35 with 0.35 cents. ARGH!

The use of tritium lighting products is controlled in the United States as a "frivolous" use of nuclear technology. You can buy safety markers, provided you permanently attach them and register their location. You can buy watches and gun sights with a small amount in them, but there isn't much else on the exemption list. You can not have a glowing tritium powered keychain.

Unless there is a regulatory change you will not be able to swing by home depot and grab yourself a couple feet of basement stair safety strips or bike blingers.

For about £15 you can buy a tritium glow stick in the UK (not sure if they're legal elsewhere). They're sold to be attached to keys.

E.g. here

The interesting thing is to get this into a paint/material, that's pretty cool! Perhaps we will see it used where electricity/batteries aren't safe/reliable.

The difference between the watches made in the 20s and this stuff now is that radium is considerably more radioactive.

Plus, unlike radium, tritium isn't readily incorporated into bone. As someone else posted, tritium is treated as water, which is much less of an issue.

You don't want to eat the stuff, but it's really not that bad.

Tritium isn't so bad. I've got a watch filled with small tritium tubes.

It's the same radiation that makes your television glow, only it's created by the decomposition of a hydrogen isotope rather than a cathode ray tube.

I'd say it's completely safe, provided that you don't extract the H3, burn it, and then inhale the resulting water vapour.

As for disposal, it's got a half-life of 12 years, which ain't so bad.

Very nice idea from a science standpoint and much safer than using toxic radium. But let's get real, this product can not be marketed. It's doomed. Think about how freaked out people get about irradiated food, which has zero residual radiation.

Actively radioactive substances on children's toys is a product that doesn't work from any marketing angle. This is not the 1910s when radioactive materials were used as health tonics.

I believe the question is how the radioactive compound is contained? Is it merely contained or inertly included at a molecular level? Like other commenter's mentioned, only in readily consumed molecules is it ever to be likely to be damaging. So if the the containing compound can be proved to be unharmful in any of it's chemical byproducts can it be deemed safe.

I have rarely wanted something so much.

I am supposing if the risk is inhalation, they might have solved that by trapping it in a non inhalation form of plastic?

Either way, this would solve a problem for me with disposable glow in the dark stuff.

How exactly do we dispose of this when the time eventually comes? I don't suppose the radioactive gas to be environmentally friendly...

Chill out with the radioactivity fear already. We're not in the 80s anymore.

Clearly, whatever this material is, it contains the energy to glow for 12 years at 210 lumens (re: roger). Regardless of whether it's coal powered or radioactive, if this material contains all its energy from the start, it means that inhaling it is never going to be a good idea.

Also, the question is whether these microspheres can readily burst. Given that they're microspheres, they're obviously not going to burst because of sharp objects, or even because of a mallet. They're going to burst from environmental factors: exposure to sun, exposure to heat, salt water etc... Question is how quickly.

The only real issue that I can see is what Abe Lincoln said: what fire damage does to these. But once again, compared to burning titanium oxyde based paint, I don't see that this is so much more dangerous. Burning paint fumes will kill you whether they are radioactive or not.

production and diposal. what makes you think it is safe to produce? what if any of it eventually gets burned after it is discarded? it does not sound safe to me in the pre and post phase. OH YES you can consume it in the middle. "never before have I wanted something so badly." You're drunk.

Tritium has a half life of 12 years, so in 12 years its light output would be at 50%.

Ellen you're referring to Radium, I doubt they'd use that.

I bet if they called it "electron emission" instead of "beta radiation," most of the knee-jerk reaction to this substance would be mitigated.

It works the same way a CRT screen works - Electrons are emitted and they hit phosphorus which glows. I wonder how many Treehuggers have an old-fashioned tube TV in their houses.

Frankly, the "ZOMG RADIATION" crowd are one of the things I hate about being an environmentalist. I constantly get lumped in with them by non-environmentalists in the tech sector who think I must be some sort of troglodyte because of how others react to the word "radioactivity."

Where do you dispose of the plastic after 12 years? What has the tritium degraded to? This is good for only a few specific situations.

RE: solving the disposable glow in the dark stuff.. LED lights of all shapes and sizes are available for the emergency/SAR and rave scenes. Couple this with rechargeable batteries, and you've got a pretty good solution.

Aren't these lights a bit Un-Treehugger?

Tritium decays extremely fast when exposed to the atmosphere. I remember calculating the decay in university when they introduced tritium exit signs all over the place. It turns out that even if you broke it open, the tritium would decay away to virtually nothing before it traveled more than 1 cm.
Anyhow, this is old technology, it's just the whole "radiation" thing that scares everybody.

I know everyone is all caught up in the radioactive debate, but what about some of the real world purposes for the stuff? I’m living at a residence building overlooking a parking lot, and I thought –hey, what if they put this in the parking lot? Turn off those 1000watt bulbs, and put a bit of hardly-radioactive stuff on the parking lines. I’m sure it would look very cool in the winter when covered in snow. Damn, I could make millions off this idea >_

What’s worse: about 60 1000watt light bulbs burning fossil fuels or some Tritium lines that need to be repainted every 12 years or so. My only concern would be with the paint coming off and getting into run-off, which would be bad, I’m sure.

THIS IS NON-TOXIC MATERIAL and is a new lightsource.

There is nothing radioactive about this material!

NO TRITIUM in this material!

This is Clean Energy Free Lighting - completely NON-TOXIC.

Sincerely,
Steve Stark

The abundant material used to create LITROENERGY is non-toxic, we do nothing toxic to it and it will break down in the future non-toxic.

There is no fear with waste material.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,
Steve Stark

@ steve stark:

since your post suggests that you belong to litroenergy:
if it does not contain tritium: how does it work?

Well then, Mr. Stark, how exactly does it work.

hey Steve Stark. I assume you are an employee of Litroenergy. Can you provide links showing that the product is not toxic in the production, use, or disposal process?

It does look cool, but we all know that you don't get something for free. The power to generate light for 12 years sounds like radioactive to me. So links to your data would help bring the conversation up to speed.

No Tritium? That's no fun. What beta emitter do you use? C-14? Ni-63? P-32? Give me a few minutes alone with a sample, a gas proportional counter, a spectrometer, and a HPGe detector, and I'll discover your secrets.

The gas is probably not Tritium, but it's probably Tritiated something. Tritiated methane or something more intert. Can't think of any fairly stable, non-combustible hydrogen containing gases off the top of my head. Maybe it's (C-14)O2?

And if it's a betavoltaic like it says in the patent app, it is radioactive, so cut the B.S. Just because you don't like the word, doesn't mean it's not spontaneously emitting electrons.

Nothing radio-active? NO true according to the link:

"MPK Co., has come up with self-luminous micro particles ...using a radioactive gas."

And beside, the energy has to come from somewhere. If not radio-active decay, then where?

Nothing radio-active? NO true according to the link:

"MPK Co., has come up with self-luminous micro particles ...using a radioactive gas."

And beside, the energy has to come from somewhere. If not radio-active decay, then where?

this seems like its probably fake... there are no real news pages reporting this just a link to some wiki that is pretty clearly edited by the company and asks for money.

wouldn't it be neat to have photo cells sandwiched between layers of thes light to creat a power source for 12 years?

Steve-

Have any kids? Would you let them drink say, a 1/2 liter of this stuff? Because that's what "non-toxic" means to me.

And also, there is no such thing as "energy free lighting." Light is energy.

Steve Stark, if you are the same person, not just using the same name, you're contradicting your own company's patent document and web page.

I realize this could be a troll. Site owner, can you check the IP and see if this is coming from the same person?

Quoting the company's website

"It is a betavoltaic technology, using a radioactive gas, ... emission of electrons from the beta emitting gas ..."
and

"he present invention provides self luminosity by means of a plurality of glass or polymer microspheres containing both a light-emitting phosphor and a radioactive gas...."

There is no other beta-emitting gas with a 12-year half life available besides tritium. It's in common use. The restrictions in the EU are much looser than those in the USA.

Tritium is very slippery stuff (it's a hydrogen isotope, after all). I'd like to know how you clean the outside of your microspheres, and where you're buying them.

Search on it. Just one of many examples:

http://www.bookofjoe.com/2005/01/glow_ring_so_co.html

Is this the patent you're relying on?
I did some searching and find you're all over the blogs recently talking about this.

I sure can't imagine how else you could get something like this, except this way:
http://www.freshpatents.com/Long-life-self-luminous-microspheres-dt20070830ptan20070200074.php?type=description

Let's try that again, to get a clickable link.

The forum software is cutting it off, so, here it is in two lines, just put them back together as a single line in the browser:

http://www.freshpatents.com/Long-life-self-luminous-
microspheres-dt20070830ptan20070200074.php?type=description

Rats, the forum software cuts off the long link.

Here it is on two lines, you'll have to cut and paste to get it all into the browser window:

http://www.freshpatents.com/Long-life-self-luminous-microspheres
-dt20070830ptan20070200074.php?type=description

I'd take the remote chance of being exposed to the radioactivity if it meant having a constant light source in an emergency pack or on a life raft. Tom hanks could of really used this stuff!

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:MPK_Co's_Litroenergy

What happens to tritium when it breaks down? It's hydrogen. Oh noes, that stuff'll kill you. Have you folks completely forgotten any chemistry classes you might've bumbled into? If it's just plastic doped with a tritium oxide, it's safer than a toy you'd get from China, a hundred fold. For reals.

Looks like the forum software here chokes on long lines, but you can look it up with Google.

I can't find anything besides tritium that could be powering this illuminator. Beta emitter, 12-year half life, suitable to encapsulate in microspheres, everything fits.

Someone's being fooled by the denial, hard to tell who it is.

Let us know. This could well be an interesting product -- it looks better than the porous silica, the last attempt I recall to produce a stable illuminator with this stuff captured.

The US regulations are very restrictive on using tritium illuminators, though.

tritium has such low levels of radiation that a piece of paper between the source and a giger counter will prevent the counter from reading ANY emissions.... its just about the safest radiation there is, and probably a lot safer than those energy efficient light bulbs with mercury. I'd rather pick up tritium than mercury if a bulb breaks.