Quote:
Originally Posted by IROC
Thanks for chiming in. As soon as I saw your user ID, I thought "oh, yeah! Los Alamos!". 
The only other DOE facility that has shown any interest is INL, but I don't think it is going to bear much fruit. We had a meeting with our internal F&O people last week about developing the capability to do the machining here on site. You're right - it will be expensive, but we don't really have a choice.
We just got a quote back for some beryllium. Talk about expensive!! |
I understand why it is expensive--those materials are nasty. I have a friend who worked decades ago in the nuclear industry, machining nuclear bomb parts out of beryllium. He developed berylliosis, which has pretty much destroyed his lungs after 30 years--he uses oxygen to breathe. Apparently they didn't know about the deleterious effects back then.
I bet cadmium is equally hazardous to machine.