Hacker News Reader

Comment by _n_b_ | Hacker News Reader

Plutonium is very pyrophoric, especially dust, powder, fines, shavings, etc.

Plutonium metal likes to form a hydride layer that rapidly oxidizes in the presence of any water; this oxide then vigorously reacts with water. Plutonium fires have occurred at several national labs in the US, including two incidents that contaminated the Rocky Flats site.

Forget demon cores and use as an elaborate poisoning agent, the stuff is a huge conventional safety hazard.

Edit: my vote for actual most dangerous substance known to man, though, goes to chlorine trifluoride[1]. It will vigorously react with sand, bricks, asbestos, and other stuff that is usually reliably inert.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...

View on HN

Wow. That might be the most reactive chemical that can be stably synthesized and kept at normal temperatures and pressures.

I wonder if the Aliens movies got their idea for the blood from this stuff.

> There’s a report from the early 1950s (in this PDF) of a one-ton spill of the stuff. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I'm sure no one involved ever forgot. That process, I should add, would necessarily have been accompanied by copious amounts of horribly toxic and corrosive by-products: it’s bad enough when your reagent ignites wet sand, but the clouds of hot hydrofluoric acid are your special door prize if you’re foolhardy enough to hang around and watch the fireworks.

If I recall the detailed story, the workers sued the government for work hazards and they...conveniently added fluoride to toothpaste right around the time.

See?! So safe even dentists recommentd it!111 /s

Chemical bonds matter!

"The dose makes the poison"; biology is full of substances that can keep you alive in small quantities and kill you in large ones.

It's not even the dose here, it's the reactivity of the chemical bonds. Sodium fluoride (alkali-halogen) bonds are a lot more stable than halogen-halogen bonds. And a Chlorine Trifluoride bond? Woah.

This seems similar to FOOF (Dioxygen difluoride), but with actual practical applications for its use.

For the record, it was polonium, not plutonium that was used as a poison that one time.

Derek Lowe is a national treasure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com