Uranium glass, also known as vaseline glass or Depression glass, was extremely popular during the 1930s and glows bright “radioactive” green under ultraviolet light.īut while none of these natural Uranium compounds emit light spontaneously or continuously, it was their unique fluorescent and phosphorescent properties which lead inadvertently to the discovery of radioactivity. Indeed, until the start of the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s, the main use of Uranium in industry was as a pigment for colouring ceramics and glass. ![]() Many natural ores of Uranium like Autunite and Saleeite are fluorescent and phosphorescent, meaning that they will glow brightly under ultraviolet light and continue to glow in the dark for some time after first being charged in sunlight. So then, how did the image of glowing green sludge come to dominate our collective perception of radioactivity? It is an image which has appeared in countless movies and TV shows, yet, as we saw in our previous video How Does Nuclear Waste Disposal Work, real nuclear waste looks nothing as exciting as its fictional counterpart, consisting mainly of rather plain-looking rods of depleted Uranium pulled from nuclear reactor cores. ![]() ![]() If I were to ask you to picture “radioactive waste,” the image that would likely spring to mind is that of a rusty metal barrel leaking glowing, neon-green sludge.
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