Posted on 05/08/2008 8:50:56 PM PDT by Flavius
2008 Radiation Shield Technologies has been granted a new patent for Demron, the protective garment that shields users from alpha and beta radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, and other nuclear emissions. The flexible, cool, and lightweight suit provides all the protection of a lead apron with a new level of comfort, and without any dermal or inhalation risks. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at nuovoportale.com ...
First Responder First ResponderFirst Responder
Demron™ radiation shielding garments will allow emergency responders to respond to incidents such as transportation accidents involving radioactive materials, terrorist incidents involving radioactive dispersal devices (RDD), or nuclear weapons. Additional benefits provided by Demron™ garments are psychological fear remediation, as well as providing a cooler core environment (suit) for the wearer.
JSLIST protective clothing currently worn by our men and women in uniform offers no protection from penetrating ionizing radiation. Demron™ radiation shielding garments can be worn alone, or in conjunction with JSLIST protective clothing to provide our soldiers with the protection they need in specific radiological combat environments.
Medical MedicalMedical
Demron™ fabric offers a lead free and toxic free alternative to traditional lead aprons. The Demron™ aprons and vests are lightweight, comfortable, washable, and have no disposal restrictions. Unlike traditional medical aprons, the Demron™ fabric does not crack when bent or folded. This advantage allows for unique designs.
http://www.radshield.com/store.cfm
If it’s light weight, it offers minimal protection from gamma rays.
“ummm, does it come in something besides BLACK?”
I was thinking of a nice teal.
;-)
Perfect anti-Zot suit
I’ll stick with lead.
Ah, a Sharks fan...
What portion of radiation is stopped? Paper will stop alpha radiation, so I expect essentially 100% blockage of it. Now, how much beta or gamma radiation will it block?
Dental X-ray strangeness: My hygenist tells me to shut my eyes during the x-ray. She's shooting radiation through my teeth and my eyelids are supposed to protect my eyes? Maybe she just doesn't want the radiation coming in the back of my eyes to get out.
The reason flexible rtadiation shielding is advantageous due to its lack of concentrated bulk, i.e. lead plates, etc. By the use of flexible shielding materials, the shield mass necessary to stop neutrons and ionizing radiation is distributed over a wider area, thus decreasing the weight loading per unit of support surface area.
LOL. Sounds like the basis for a good Mythbuster’s episode.
You might want to add this to the space ping list.
I can see where this material might prove useful in spaceflight. Although stopping heavy cosmic ray particles is still an issue.
Half-life is a constant; all atoms of the same element have the same half-life just as they have the same "mean" life. The half-life of a nuclide is the time it takes for half of the original number of atoms to decay. This constant rate of decay varies depending upon the particular element involved. Q- What is meant by the term "Half-Life"?
All atoms of the same elements have the same half-life? So all forms of hydrogen have the same half-life? All forms of uranium have the same half-life? Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
H-1 (normal hydrogen) is stable. Its half-life is infinite. H-3 (tritium) has a half-life of about 12 years. U-235 (enriched uranium) has a half-life of 704 million years, while U-238 (depleted uranium) has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years.
I really hope they had Skippy the Webmaster writing this instead of someone responsible for designing nuclear protection material.
Oh, sorry. Where were we? It's a mug's game. We gotta be nice. She's gonna put them sharp pointy thingies in our mouth real soon now...
“The molecules in the polymer have been designed so that any radiation will meet a large electron cloud, giving the impression of large atoms, which will deflect or absorb it.”
“Demron is a liquid metal that feels like fabric and is cool to the touch,” said DeMeo, the surgeon who developed Demron. “It’s the world’s only full-body radiation protection fabric that shields against X-ray and low-energy Gamma emissions.”
“Demron is an advanced radiopaque nano-polymeric compound fused between layers of fabric and manufactured into several lightweight, nuclear-blocking garments. Demron is used in full-body nuclear, biological, and nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) suits, tactical anti-nuclear vests, high-energy nuclear suppression blankets, medical X-ray vests and aprons.”
The key to radiation safety is to keep the source material outside of the body. Unbroken skin is actually a fairly good radiation shield, but if a radiation source (e.g a tiny piece of plutonium, bomb debris, fallout etc.) gets inside the body via ingestion, inhalation, or through a cut or scratch, the result is serious trouble. Even "weak" alpha radiation is pure murder on mucous membranes, organs, and soft tissue; betas, gammas, and neutrons are even worse. Subcritical plutonium is only an alpha emitter, but if ingested, a piece of plutonium the size of a grain of salt will cook a person's insides like a Christmas hen in a matter of days, and there is essentially no medical treatment for such a horrible injury. Pain management and general hospice care are the only options indicated in such cases.
This the value of coveralls. The primary purpose of a "radiation suit" is not to stop radiation from passing through the wearer, but to keep the sources of that radiation outside of the wearer's body. Given external sources and a limited exposure, the body's natural repair mechanisms can usually fix radiation-induced somatic damage.
Even if the ‘nauts were protected those cosmic rays could fry computers on the ship.
I suspect that they would tell you that an H-1 atom and an H-3 atom are not the same atoms. I’ll let the sub-atomic philosophers fight over that though....
Cosmic radiation is composed of high-energy electrically charged particles (helium nuclei, protons, etc.) that can be mitigated onboard a spacecraft by the use of shielding, both passive (plastics, water, liquid hydrogen, hydrocarbons, etc.) and active (magnetic fields and plasma sheaths). Of course, some of those cosmic particles come zooming in at such high energies that nothing can stop them. I read about one single cosmic radiation particle impact event that carried with it an impact energy of 50 Joules — the impact of a tennis ball hitting a wall at 94 mph! Now imagine the tennis ball is the size of a subatomic particle, and the “wall” is a cell within your body...
Could this be adapted to be used in space?
This could be something big.
I’d like to rent one of these to use in November. Simply holding one’s nose won’t do the trick.
btt
Radiation hardened electronics are already utilized in military satellites that have to survive even a moderate nuclear event. But there are efforts made in civilian spacecraft to minimize their susceptibility to most of the radiation they will see in space. But certainly this new material might give designers new options for protecting sensitive electronics too. But like B-chan noted, the cosmic radiation shielding is a different animal and even with the best shielding, the rare particle strike can fry a circuit and keep on going.
I wouldn’t want to be out there with limited spares and repair capability, not to mention limited medical care options.
Yep, Z is key.
Not true. The risk would be development of a cancer due to damage to nearby cells. PU will not 'cook' you. If 'ingested', the Pu would most likely be eliminated in a day or so. Particles fine enough to be inhaled could be trapped in the lungs which could cause a cancer after many years of alpha damage to cells.
“Additional benefits provided by Demron™ garments are psychological fear remediation, as well as providing a cooler core environment (suit) for the wearer.”
Get one for Al Gore in Polar-bear white.
Inhaled Pu, however, is extremely dangerous. Keep in mind I'm talking about macro-scale particles here; as you correctly point out, microscopic particles of Pu "merely" pose a higher lifetime cancer risk. "Extremely small particles of plutonium on the order of micrograms can cause lung cancer if inhaled into the lungs. Considerably larger amounts may cause acute radiation poisoning and death if ingested or inhaled" 2.
Thanks for correcting my mistake.
As of 1990 -- 45 years later, all but 7 were still alive, and only one of those 7 had died of cancer -- a rare form of bone cancer which they suspect was the result of prolonged alpha radiation from Pu which took up residence in the bone marrow region. The odds of one of the subjects developing that type of cancer is 1 in a 100, so they can't rule out that it was a natural occurrence.
That’s why you are not out there.
A few centuries ago people were afraid of crossing the Atlantic and entering a dangerous new world. We call their descendants Europeans. The future belongs to the bold.
F U.
YOu don’t know me. Don’t ever respond to my posts again.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.