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 KiloFiX wrote:

It could be some equivalent of Depleted Uranium (less common, slightly radioactive) or Tungsten (more common, cheaper to mass produce).

As an industrial waste product depleted uranium is way cheaper and more readily available than tungsten.

 Irbis wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Just out of curiosity, do we know for sure that Adamantium *isn't* depleted Uranium?

given the things adamantium is used for that seems highly unlikey. DU is radioactive after all

No it's not. That's what 'depleted' means - vast majority of radioactive material is gone, leaving behind completely neutral bits. Hell, you can buy depleted uranium weights for stabilizing fancy boats, or to lower the centre of gravity of racing cars - uses that would be hardly possible if the chunk of metal you put under your seat was radioactive, eh?

With caveat 'better not be on receiving end of particle beam or near other significant neutron sources' - something we can almost guarantee to happen for adamantium items in WH40M environment.

PS As for 'safe 'cos sold in open market'...one name, David Hahn.

 Irbis wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Just out of curiosity, do we know for sure that Adamantium *isn't* depleted Uranium?

given the things adamantium is used for that seems highly unlikey. DU is radioactive after all

No it's not. That's what 'depleted' means - vast majority of radioactive material is gone, leaving behind completely neutral bits. Hell, you can buy depleted uranium weights for stabilizing fancy boats, or to lower the centre of gravity of racing cars - uses that would be hardly possible if the chunk of metal you put under your seat was radioactive, eh?

All isotopes of uranium are radioactive.

pismakron wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Just out of curiosity, do we know for sure that Adamantium *isn't* depleted Uranium?

given the things adamantium is used for that seems highly unlikey. DU is radioactive after all

No it's not. That's what 'depleted' means - vast majority of radioactive material is gone, leaving behind completely neutral bits. Hell, you can buy depleted uranium weights for stabilizing fancy boats, or to lower the centre of gravity of racing cars - uses that would be hardly possible if the chunk of metal you put under your seat was radioactive, eh?

All isotopes of uranium are radioactive.

So are bananas and lots of bits of Aberdeen.

So are brazil nuts but it doesn't make them any less delicious

 Cream Tea wrote:
It's about 40% percent less radioactive than natural uranium, but still clearly radioactive. It's also poisonous, and these are both reasons it's not used more.

Erm, no. All it is being weak alpha emitter. Alpha particles, to give you perspective, is a type of radiation that is nearly perfectly stopped by such hard to obtain cover as layer of dead cells on top of your skin or a sheet of paper. That is, if 30-40 cm of air didn't stopped it before it made all the way through it. Literally the only chance of harming you by a piece of depleted uranium is A) either dropping it on your own foot, or B) grinding it into dust and injecting it into your bloodstream or embedding it into your lungs. Only then it can actually affect any living cells.

Sadly, with 'nucular' hysteria these days, any type of radioactivity is bad. Never mind the fact a banana is actually more radioactive than same mass of depleted uranium

Also, that fancy vivid yellow enamel French companies used to put on dinner plates and other dish pieces as late as 1999? Depleted uranium. Two tons of trim weights on older jets? Depleted uranium. Fancy water from popular spa resorts? Depleted uranium. Etc, etc.

 Irbis wrote:
Erm, no. All it is being weak alpha emitter.

DU penetrators shover everything in tiny particles and dust if they penetrated - and it burns, creating DU oxide dusts. Penetrated or damaged DU armor is the same. Enough to make people chronically sick, if they just climb around in destroyed wreckages of the enemy for a bit - as many Gulf War Veterans can testify.
Radioactive decay will make it decompose into elements that emit beta particles when they decay.

Never mind the fact a banana is actually more radioactive than same mass of depleted uranium

Sure, why don't you swallow a DU pellet of equal mass to a banana if it's not a big deal, or inhale uranium dust of the same mass? Uranium is not only radioactive, it is also very toxic. It's not used anymore because of the plethora of evidence that proves it is poisoning/radiating the environment/battlefield when it gets damaged. Except for US of A (whos military vividly reject any notion of it's use having any effects on their soldiers or civilians) no other country uses DU for weaponry.

UK still uses DU weapons

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/depleted-uranium-du-munitions

A little bit of light googling would indicate that France still does too and maybe Russia.

 Irbis wrote:

 Cream Tea wrote:
It's about 40% percent less radioactive than natural uranium, but still clearly radioactive. It's also poisonous, and these are both reasons it's not used more.

Erm, no. All it is being weak alpha emitter. Alpha particles, to give you perspective, is a type of radiation that is nearly perfectly stopped by such hard to obtain cover as layer of dead cells on top of your skin or a sheet of paper. That is, if 30-40 cm of air didn't stopped it before it made all the way through it. Literally the only chance of harming you by a piece of depleted uranium is A) either dropping it on your own foot, or B) grinding it into dust and injecting it into your bloodstream or embedding it into your lungs. Only then it can actually affect any living cells.

Sadly, with 'nucular' hysteria these days, any type of radioactivity is bad. Never mind the fact a banana is actually more radioactive than same mass of depleted uranium

Also, that fancy vivid yellow enamel French companies used to put on dinner plates and other dish pieces as late as 1999? Depleted uranium. Two tons of trim weights on older jets? Depleted uranium. Fancy water from popular spa resorts? Depleted uranium. Etc, etc.

I am not saying that uranium is dangerous, just that it indeed is radioactive, contrary to what you claimed earlier. It is not a particularly dangerous level of radioactivity, and is often handled without other protective remedies than a thin layer of varnish or just latex gloves. But Depleted Uranium is not hazard-free. For one thing, it is reactive, pyrophoric and, like most other heavy metals, it is also toxic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Keep wrote:

Never mind the fact a banana is actually more radioactive than same mass of depleted uranium

Sure, why don't you swallow a DU pellet of equal mass to a banana if it's not a big deal, or inhale uranium dust of the same mass? Uranium is not only radioactive, it is also very toxic. It's not used anymore because of the plethora of evidence that proves it is poisoning/radiating the environment/battlefield when it gets damaged. Except for US of A (whos military vividly reject any notion of it's use having any effects on their soldiers or civilians) no other country uses DU for weaponry.

The russians and ukrainians certainly use depleted uranium. It is much cheaper than the alternative, wolfram (tungsten), which is equally toxic.

Weapons of war are not made to be enviromentally benign.

 Keep wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Erm, no. All it is being weak alpha emitter.

DU penetrators shover everything in tiny particles and dust if they penetrated - and it burns, creating DU oxide dusts. Penetrated or damaged DU armor is the same. Enough to make people chronically sick, if they just climb around in destroyed wreckages of the enemy for a bit - as many Gulf War Veterans can testify.
Radioactive decay will make it decompose into elements that emit beta particles when they decay.

Never mind the fact a banana is actually more radioactive than same mass of depleted uranium

Sure, why don't you swallow a DU pellet of equal mass to a banana if it's not a big deal, or inhale uranium dust of the same mass? Uranium is not only radioactive, it is also very toxic. It's not used anymore because of the plethora of evidence that proves it is poisoning/radiating the environment/battlefield when it gets damaged. Except for US of A (whos military vividly reject any notion of it's use having any effects on their soldiers or civilians) no other country uses DU for weaponry.

Yes, its toxic. But it can be handled safely. It's radioactivity isn't really a problem.

 Irbis wrote:

 Cream Tea wrote:
It's about 40% percent less radioactive than natural uranium, but still clearly radioactive. It's also poisonous, and these are both reasons it's not used more.

Erm, no. All it is being weak alpha emitter. Alpha particles, to give you perspective, is a type of radiation that is nearly perfectly stopped by such hard to obtain cover as layer of dead cells on top of your skin or a sheet of paper. That is, if 30-40 cm of air didn't stopped it before it made all the way through it. Literally the only chance of harming you by a piece of depleted uranium is A) either dropping it on your own foot, or B) grinding it into dust and injecting it into your bloodstream or embedding it into your lungs. Only then it can actually affect any living cells.

Sadly, with 'nucular' hysteria these days, any type of radioactivity is bad. Never mind the fact a banana is actually more radioactive than same mass of depleted uranium

Also, that fancy vivid yellow enamel French companies used to put on dinner plates and other dish pieces as late as 1999? Depleted uranium. Two tons of trim weights on older jets? Depleted uranium. Fancy water from popular spa resorts? Depleted uranium. Etc, etc.

You said it wasn't radioactive. It is.

I know the difference between alpha, beta and gamma radiation, and that radioactivity exists all over in nature. If you wanted to say that depleted uranium has low levels of radiation and isn't particularly dangerous if handled correctly, you could have said just that, instead of falsely correcting another post.

Everyone knows about bananas being radioactive, and who hasn't heard of carbon-14? It's pretty common knowledge that not all radioactivity is bad.

How about "Depleted Uranium's radioactivity isn't worth talking about compared to its toxicity, so lets talk about how toxic it is...

... and then lets talk about how the Imperium of Man doesn't give a gak and uses this stuff wherever it can, I imagine."

I especially like the "ersatz-adamantium" or whatever presented earlier; the idea that some worlds may have DU and others may not, but they instead have some other super-hard science-fantasy metal that is similar.

 Desubot wrote:
Odd question but how hard is it to find and refine uranium.

it may not be viable for the imperium to go running around looking for it when it appears they have already mastered fusion tech.

there are probably the odd "modern" era worlds that may get into it but if it eventually does not meet the output requirements of the imperium then there is no reason to refine and so there wont be any byproduct for d shells.

Finding uranium is not difficult. It's a fairly common heavy element.

Refining it takes time though, so unless you happen to want the incredible power generated by enriched uranium there is little point to doing it.

But you could just use regular uraninum(not enriched or depleted) to make projectiles. Still has all the same properties, and mildly radioactive.

And the Imperium doesn't care a ton about Radioactivity. And they likely have plenty of medicine to make it fairly trivial to treat.

 Exergy wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Odd question but how hard is it to find and refine uranium.

it may not be viable for the imperium to go running around looking for it when it appears they have already mastered fusion tech.

there are probably the odd "modern" era worlds that may get into it but if it eventually does not meet the output requirements of the imperium then there is no reason to refine and so there wont be any byproduct for d shells.

Finding uranium is not difficult. It's a fairly common heavy element.

Refining it takes time though, so unless you happen to want the incredible power generated by enriched uranium there is little point to doing it.

But you could just use regular uraninum(not enriched or depleted) to make projectiles. Still has all the same properties, and mildly radioactive.

That would be weird as hell. Regular uranium is a valuable commodity and the source of 10% of the worlds electricity production. Depleted uranium is a rather abundant waste-product.

pismakron wrote:

 Exergy wrote:


Finding uranium is not difficult. It's a fairly common heavy element.

Refining it takes time though, so unless you happen to want the incredible power generated by enriched uranium there is little point to doing it.

But you could just use regular uraninum(not enriched or depleted) to make projectiles. Still has all the same properties, and mildly radioactive.

That would be weird as hell. Regular uranium is a valuable commodity and the source of 10% of the worlds electricity production. Depleted uranium is a rather abundant waste-product.

But as noted above, on a world that uses cold fusion or super efficient plasma reactors then they have no need to use fission reactors. Hence uranium becomes a pointless resource for energy production.

 Flinty wrote:

pismakron wrote:

 Exergy wrote:


Finding uranium is not difficult. It's a fairly common heavy element.

Refining it takes time though, so unless you happen to want the incredible power generated by enriched uranium there is little point to doing it.

But you could just use regular uraninum(not enriched or depleted) to make projectiles. Still has all the same properties, and mildly radioactive.

That would be weird as hell. Regular uranium is a valuable commodity and the source of 10% of the worlds electricity production. Depleted uranium is a rather abundant waste-product.

But as noted above, on a world that uses cold fusion or super efficient plasma reactors then they have no need to use fission reactors. Hence uranium becomes a pointless resource for energy production.

Yes, but in such a world they would have no need for uranium bullets either. They would just use bullets made out of super-duper alloy.

I don't think you can necessarily link the availability of plasma reactors with the availability of super alloys, so there would still be a niche for uranium based munitions to fill.

At least some worlds probably use fission still.

 Flinty wrote:
I don't think you can necessarily link the availability of plasma reactors with the availability of super alloys, so there would still be a niche for uranium based munitions to fill.

There still are feral and feudal worlds... so i would argue that anything in between plasma reactor and camp fire is a go in 40k as far as power generation goes. Plasmareactors are too clean and stable for my taste anyway Fission and fossiles all the way

 Keep wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
I don't think you can necessarily link the availability of plasma reactors with the availability of super alloys, so there would still be a niche for uranium based munitions to fill.

There still are feral and feudal worlds... so i would argue that anything in between plasma reactor and camp fire is a go in 40k as far as power generation goes. Plasmareactors are too clean and stable for my taste anyway Fission and fossiles all the way

Certainly

though from a fluff standpoint its up in the air.

has there been any books or fluff that has confirmed usage of nuclear devices?

IIRC i think the kreig did.

but ultimately if the question is if the wider imperium does then the answer is probably not because of the availability of plasma scifi tech.

but ultimately if the question is if the wider imperium does then the answer is probably not because of the availability of plasma scifi tech.

Again, there are feral worlds, forgeworlds and anything in between. Plasma weapons in 40k are rare things (or have been). Anything with plasma reactor (titans, space ships) is considered very valuable and pretty rare. So it would be strange if everyone has plasma reactors.
And even if almost everybody has plasma reactors, you can always pick that location or planet for your plot or whatever that doesnt have it

Nuclear fusion weapons cant exist to my understanding (becauye you need the force to compress and create the plasma, if let go it just falls apart). Ok it's scifi, but still...
So most simple nuclear weapons and therefore most available would most likely be nuclear fission
Also, nuclear fission and radiation is just to cool of a concept to not use - authors love it.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=nuclear&go=Go