Quote:
Originally Posted by HighlandFP
I expect the children who make the bulbs wont cost more than "tuppence a day"
Bear you are not just a pretty face. I have taken my coooncil installed smoke alarm oot. I read that they are full of depleated uranium or somesuch....
Advice?
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For gawds sake put it back!
The domestic smoke detectors are absolutely safe as long as you don’t take the detector apart, that’s usually a thing about the size of a cotton reel with slots in it and a yellow radiation sticker on it and to take that apart would need some force and deliberate action.
Even then you would need to eat the blo*dy thing, a tiny speck of gery matter smaller than a pin head, and even then you would have to live about a hunderd years to be certain of coming to harm.
The detector works by having a tiny quantity of an alpha emitter, in all cases that I am aware of it’s the oxide of Americium-241, a by-product of Pu decay, and I gram of the stuff provides enough material for about 5-6 THOUSAND smoke detectors What’s more it’s got a very long half life and so it’s not going to wear out.
The way it works is the alpha radiation forms the electrical circuit which, because alpha radiation can be shielded by even a piece of tissue paper (or in this case smoke particles) the presence of smoke has the effect of a switch being opened which is what sets the rest of the circuitry going and the alarm to be sounded.
Because the whole radiation path is contained within a shielded component with a few holes to let the air circulate through it and because the source is exceedingly stable there is zero radiation detectable outside of the thing and consequently it is absolutely safe.
Put it back up, mate, and
make sure the batteries are kept up to date!