http://www.unitednuclear.com/everything.htm

Guaranteed to make you the center of attention (for an ongoing investigation by the Dept. of Homeland Security...)

Beryllium is fun stuff.

I remember our technical staff freaking out when somebody asked them to engineer some custom x-ray windows for an experiment.

One of the main research centers for Beryllium is Los Alamos, after the Weapons boys moved deeper into the desert. Their laboratories had the right safety regime for handling the stuff.

I heard a story of one laboratory room beeing closed and sealed permanently after a researcher dropped a vile containing beryllium oxide powder on the floor (the man survived because he was wearing a 'spacesuit').

Considering all this I find it funny that the name means 'sweet' in Greek, as it's compounds taste sweet - as witnessed by early chemists :-)

Wow, it's so hard to tell if that is a spoof site. After much perusal, I conclude they're serious.

The items they sell contain small, safe amounts of radiation. I'd still tend, no matter what I purchased, to get some lead sheets to keep it in.

But really, don't file the uranium metal, or the Beryllium Sphere. (Wow, there really IS a Beryllium Sphere! Galaxy Quest movie buffs will be so pleased!)

Allan, there's a natural radioactive background to all environments (space radiation apparently). If those items are barely active enough to get a reading on an outstandingly sensitive Geiger counter, I doubt they'd be a threat.

The active radiation is often not a measure of it's danger.

The possibility for the substance to enter and remain in your body sets the risk.

Alpha radiation is stopped by a few inches of air, but a tiny fragment in your body will expose many cells in the neighbourhoud to long term radiation, and then the chance of one of them turning malignant is large.

Perhaps we should sell breathing masks to populations where depleted uranium munitions have been employed, judging by this safety notice published by the vendors:

http://www.unitednuclear.com/uraniummsds.htm

The damage is mostly done already.

Not even was it ordinary depleted uranium used in these AP rounds, sometimes more harmfull stuff is mixed with it. Nice way to get rid of your waste products.