Beryllium?

[no704]

Yes, pure beryllium. To be used as a neutron reflector in a reactor core. Been doing a lot of reading on this. Sounds nasty to work with even without the health hazards. Will most likely be attempting the casting in ASU’s hazardous chem lab under high vacuum or inert gas. Hopefully get a part good enough to not require finish machining.
Already have the material, like 200g.

 

[dutchgray]

I've seen this - twice - once when I was a little kid, my granddad used to blow our brake drums of all that nasty chalky dust, assigned that crappy job to me at about age 5, and when I started hacking up a lung waaaaaay back then, he tied a damp bandana around my face and said "this will help". Mind you, he died of Meso when he was 70, and I (at 61) have lung issues... The second time was working some ROP "youth employer" scam in high school restoring houses (at least I learned lath and plaster - cool skill I still use!), and one rather cute (and probably dead) stud duck of all of 18 was cutting sheets of asbestos to put behind kitchen backsplashes and gas fired heater rebuilds - ... with a sidewinder saw... dust effing EVERYWHERE and his "respiratory protection" was (diggit) a wet bandana around his mouth and nose...

Did I mention I knew parents of friends when I was a kid who smoked KENT cigs with their patented Micronite filters, which were ******* pure asbestos, and are all now dead as doornails from that... Should have smoked them using pure beryllium cig holders....

At least I know if I get caught in a fire, my lungs won't burn from all the damned asbestos dust over the years..... there ARE times asbestos is a great thing, but by God you gotta be careful with it!!

We employed a carpenter who used to stack that asbestos cement board up a foot thick and cut it with a chainsaw, he died at 66 from lung cancer. Was a great guy, used to drag race in the 70's and 80' and then went to motorcycle sprinting in the 90's and early 00's, would drive any vehicle faster than anyone else I know, didn't crash one in the time I knew him.

I also knew someone who as a child in WW2 used to go and play in an asbestos storage silo, he died from heart trouble at 79. Was also a great guy, worked his whole career at Royal Dutch Shell.

 

[PCustoms]

Yes, pure beryllium. To be used as a neutron reflector in a reactor core. Been doing a lot of reading on this. Sounds nasty to work with even without the health hazards. Will most likely be attempting the casting in ASU’s hazardous chem lab under high vacuum or inert gas. Hopefully get a part good enough to not require finish machining.
Already have the material, like 200g.

I feel like this might be a little beyond the scope of garage journal....

 

[no704]

I feel like this might be a little beyond the scope of garage journal....

I think this might be a little beyond the scope of something I want to do, but here I am!

 

[mike93lx]

I feel like this might be a little beyond the scope of garage journal....

No way.

We can hash out ketchup and how to get hair out of shopping cart wheels.

We can do anything

 

[nickelTwin]

WOW
This should be interesting

 

[4xdog]

Yes, pure beryllium. To be used as a neutron reflector in a reactor core. Been doing a lot of reading on this. Sounds nasty to work with even without the health hazards. Will most likely be attempting the casting in ASU’s hazardous chem lab under high vacuum or inert gas. Hopefully get a part good enough to not require finish machining.
Already have the material, like 200g.

Won't ASU require some serious reviews of the planned work before you're allowed to proceed?

 

[no704]

Won't ASU require some serious reviews of the planned work before you're allowed to proceed?

Working with a professor there. One of our last projects with him was distilling 150 lbs of mercury.

 

[Chance]

Accidental post. I don't see any way to remove this.

 

[American Locomotive]

Distilling mercury is pretty much child's play compared to casting and machining pure beryllium (IMO).

The beryllium project has serious health risks and challenges. If no one on staff has any training or experience doing it - then you either need to hire a consultant that does, or farm the project out to a 3rd party contractor.

 

[Chance]

Distilling mercury is pretty much child's play compared to casting and machining pure beryllium (IMO).

The beryllium project has serious health risks and challenges. If no one on staff has any training or experience doing it - then you either need to hire a consultant that does, or farm the project out to a 3rd party contractor.

Yeah, like one of the national labs that deals with it already, like Sandia maybe.

 

[Steve from Socal]

What kind of reactor? You have my interest, I have been working on a non metalic heat exchanger for MSR project.

I agree a national lab maybe Oakridge could be of service?

Steve

 

[Chance]

Looks like maybe its LANL ... they have a chronic beryllium disease prevention program ... https://www.energy.gov/ea/downloads...ram-assessment-los-alamos-national-laboratory

 

[marinusdees]

Going to be casting and possibly machining pure Beryllium. Any suggestions, other than don’t breathe it?

There was an atom bomb plant in Savannah. Requiring machining of beryllium. It was known that the dust was toxic to inhale. It was not known that dust on the skin resulted in absorption. My brother is a retired MD, who finished his career dealing with industrial insurance claims resulting from this situation. I would walk (far) away, and not look back.

 

[Chance]

There was an atom bomb plant in Savannah. Requiring machining of beryllium. It was known that the dust was toxic to inhale. It was not known that dust on the skin resulted in absorption. My brother is a retired MD, who finished his career dealing with industrial insurance claims resulting from this situation. I would walk (far) away, and not look back.

I started reading about Chronic Beryllium Disease. Very sobering. This page says that the CDC estimates that 10% of workers exposed to beryllium will get CBD. That's nuts! https://nuclearworkers.org/chronic-beryllium-disease/

Was your brother a Pulmonolgist?

 

[ZRX61]

And I mess with explosives almost daily at work....

I worked with one guy who was more than a bit nervous around explosives.. which I exploited with well timed "Oops", "oh, it never did that before.." or "Damn, I should have read the manual" etc. One of the other guys would loudly yell "OH ****! & bolt for the door like an Olympic 100 yarder & more than a few times was beaten to the door by the nervous guy.
For some reason he quit after 3 months...

 

[scooby074]

Just wrap the Be in a asbestos blanket and you'll be fine.

 

[BORING HOP YARD]

I worked with beryllium copper for a few years, in aircraft manufacturing.
It was always kept wet and never allowed to dry before it was disposed of.
The beryllium copper that I worked with was 98% copper and 2% beryllium.
It's the dust that is the risk, you could touch the chips since you can't inhale them.
I was always in a white haz mat suit and the correct PPE
Machining pure beryllium would require machines capable of machining it.
The site that I worked at specialized in hard metals, heat-treated stainless steel, 4340, Titanium, cobalt and others.
Nobody could match our hard metal removal rate in the world.
I used to get tested for Chronic Beryllium Disease annually long after working with it.
We only have a few labs on the USA that can perform the test, my blood sample had to be sent from Oregon to the mid-west and processed within a 12 hour period or it was declared invalid.

 

[WordMan]

My wife's company runs a testing lab for beryllium exposure.

Page Not Found - ORISE

orise.orau.gov

 

[slowtwitch73]

Asking how to deal with it on a garage forum is not a good first step.

Makes one wonder if you're in Iran doing this or something along those lines....

Either way.

 

[brianh]

I feel like this might be a little beyond the scope of garage journal....

And the OP if asking here.............

 

[Southernbuild]

Regardless, of the challenges / risks, if you continue with the project, please document it as fully as you're able to. Casting and machining a hazardous material isn't something we see much of, it sounds pretty interesting.

My wife's company runs a testing lab for beryllium exposure.

Page Not Found - ORISE

orise.orau.gov

Asking how to deal with it on a garage forum is not a good first step.

Makes one wonder if you're in Iran doing this or something along those lines....

Either way.

Never sell the Garage Journal short, we've already got a lab for the OPs blood testing....


Though any job requiring blood testing for potential toxic exposure might merit a pass. But, I'm a sucker for interesting and unusual projects, so I don't know if I could walk away from it if given the opportunity...

 

[MBfreak]

Some high power transmission vacuum tubes ( pre 1970) used BeO ( around 250 g) to insulate the filaments from the cathode.
Excellent electrical properties, lethal biological properties. Stay away.

Ola

 

[Shocker]

Ok, so is this a LWR? I have to assume it is as you are using beryllium. You might ask if graphite would be acceptable.

 

[Xti04]

⁷

My wife's company runs a testing lab for beryllium exposure.

Page Not Found - ORISE

orise.orau.gov

A lot of my patients have asbestosis and berylliosis from exposure at ORNL,K25, X-10 and Y-12. They get tested yearly and get yearly ct scans to track their lung health. All have horible respiratory function and issues. My grandfather had asbestosis and was luckily negative for beryllium. Seeing what these old guys live thru on a daily basis makes me think twice about exposing myself to in all my projects.

 

[CoogarXR]

Beryllium was also used to make high-end speakers. Typically dome mids and tweeters. If you want to nerd-out on it's sonic properties, here you go:

https://pearl-hifi.com/06_Lit_Archive/14_Books_Tech_Papers/Mowry_Steve/The%20_Truth_About_Be_Domes.pdf

 

[sonoronos]

go fer it, git r done, let us know how it works out.

 

[jblnut]

No way.

We can hash out ketchup and how to get hair out of shopping cart wheels.

We can do anything

Don't start that again .... Knowing nothing more about beryllium than what I've read in here I can confidently say I'd rather put that on my hotdogs than mustard.

 

[BigLeagueSmoes]

Yes, pure beryllium. To be used as a neutron reflector in a reactor core. Been doing a lot of reading on this. Sounds nasty to work with even without the health hazards. Will most likely be attempting the casting in ASU’s hazardous chem lab under high vacuum or inert gas. Hopefully get a part good enough to not require finish machining.
Already have the material, like 200g.

What is this, Manhattan Project 2.0?? Oppenheimer, is that you?

 

[TurnipTruck]

Back in my oil field days, one of my tasks every decade was to assist and witness the calibration of the “prover”, used to monthly prove the accuracy of positive displacement custody transfer oil meters.
Big money, state and federal witnesses, had to get within 50 pulses of 120,000, the whole nine yards.

Anyway, the prover guy always made a big show of carefully extracting the BERYLLIUM (copper? He never said) gauge ring from its bag to check for proper glycol inflation of the prover ball, and each time the gauge ring would come out, he would again tell us how apoplectic the TSA guy would get when xraying his luggage and this clearly metallic thing would not show up on the x ray.

No idea of the veracity, but he told the story often enough that there has to be some sort of truth. We were told the reason for the beryllium content was its thermal stability.

 

[RoninB4]

A lot of my patients have asbestosis and berylliosis from exposure at ORNL,K25, X-10 and Y-12. They get tested yearly and get yearly ct scans to track their lung health. All have horible respiratory function and issues. My grandfather had asbestosis and was luckily negative for beryllium. Seeing what these old guys live thru on a daily basis makes me think twice about exposing myself to in all my projects.

-A large part of the reason I've never taken a permanent or contracting job there based upon stories I've heard. You've confirmed the rumors about conditions for "expendable workers". Thank you.

 

[rlitman]

... he would again tell us how apoplectic the TSA guy would get when xraying his luggage and this clearly metallic thing would not show up on the x ray...

Yeah, that would be beryllium. BeCu would certainly show up.

 

[no704]

Didn’t have a chance to try it this week, as the venting system was not working properly.
Hopefully this issue is resolved and I will be able to get some core excess readings on Monday.

 

[Maui]

Even fire marshal Bill wouldn't mess with pure beryllium...

 

[dogdog]

Demon core - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Just read this on tiktok or instagram feed about demon core... interestingly it has pure beryllium there .... wondering now.

 

[Xti04]

-A large part of the reason I've never taken a permanent or contracting job there based upon stories I've heard. You've confirmed the rumors about conditions for "expendable workers". Thank you.

These guys were exposed to all kinds of stuff up thru the 90s and were told they were covered. I have heard stories from multiple pts that theycwould be in hot zones and when their badge showed excessive exposure they would be handed a new rad badge and told to get back in there. Or my favorite is they would take all the animals they experimented on and save them up until they had a reefer trailer full and have security dump them into huge pits they dug. These guys get weird cancers, lots of respiratory issues,skin issues among other things. Watching them get worse over the last two years has been tough. Not sure how it is over there now but I have friends who work there in all kinds of projects that I hope are better protected than these guys were.

 

[marinusdees]

I started reading about Chronic Beryllium Disease. Very sobering. This page says that the CDC estimates that 10% of workers exposed to beryllium will get CBD. That's nuts! https://nuclearworkers.org/chronic-beryllium-disease/

Was your brother a Pulmonolgist?

My brother was a family practice man in South Carolina who took a job at the bomb factory in Savannah. When the factory closed, he transitioned to dealing with the beryllium poisoning cases for the federal government, a job from which he is now retired.
As a side note, he graduated from the University of Michigan medical school in 1967 and was immediately sent to viet Nam. He told me he flew in every type of aircraft we had there, except a fighter jet. He lived for a while in a tent.

 

[Chance]

My brother was a family practice man in South Carolina who took a job at the bomb factory in Savannah. When the factory closed, he transitioned to dealing with the beryllium poisoning cases for the federal government, a job from which he is now retired.
As a side note, he graduated from the University of Michigan medical school in 1967 and was immediately sent to viet Nam. He told me he flew in every type of aircraft we had there, except a fighter jet. He lived for a while in a tent.

Much respect to him.

 

[Steve_P]

I didn't closely read all the replies so maybe this was addressed already. If you machine even beryllium alloys, and a future customer (especially a government agency, or similar) finds out that your shop has done this, they may not want to do business with you because of possible beryllium contamination issues on their upcoming work. Shops that machine things like beryllium alloys should have dedicated areas that are closed off, have special ventilation, and use dedicated tooling and machines.

 

[86turbodsl]

Yes, pure beryllium. To be used as a neutron reflector in a reactor core. Been doing a lot of reading on this. Sounds nasty to work with even without the health hazards. Will most likely be attempting the casting in ASU’s hazardous chem lab under high vacuum or inert gas. Hopefully get a part good enough to not require finish machining.
Already have the material, like 200g.

Ok, i thought you just didn't understand the difference between a beryllium alloy and pure, and was just entertained by the responses being given. Now we find out you DO know what you're being asked to do, with PURE BERYLLIUM as a NEUTRON Reflector???

WHY the hell are you asking about this process on fricking garage journal???? WTF!