Chemie mit RADIOAKTIVEN Stoffen? Zu Besuch in der FH Aachen [𝟰𝗞] | JJChemistry

Before the actual video starts, I would like to say a few words in advance. My visit to the FH Aachen was incredibly entertaining. As you can see, the video has become very long, because we laughed a lot, saw a lot and also answered a lot of exciting questions. And in general, it is something special that you were allowed to enter this institute with the camera and that I can now publish the video on YouTube. Among the questions I asked and also got answered, there are, among other things, the following. How is radioactive waste actually disposed of? Something like contaminated clothing, waste water, etc. And of course, before it can be disposed of at all, it has to be processed first. And these are the main questions. What do the laboratories look like? What safety precautions are there? What do the students generally do in the laboratories? And we even talked about how and where you can buy radioactive substances here in Germany. We did so much more and it was really a very entertaining tour. That means I can now let you into this video with good conscience. Have fun watching. Welcome to a new video. Today I am visiting the nuclear chemistry in the FH Aachen. Today we will go through the corridors and laboratories. We will show what the students do here every day or what they do every day. And what is particularly exciting is that we are dealing with nuclear chemistry, i.e. with radioactive substances. And you don't find that in any university. And that's why you need a radiation specialist. Next to me is Felix. Please introduce yourself. My name is Felix Schneider. I am a radio chemist here in the house. And I work in the laboratory for nuclear chemistry as a rock protection officer. And I also conduct the internships for the students. Felix is our contact person for everything. We will see him in the video. While we go through the laboratories and do a few experiments ourselves. Have fun with the tour. For working in control areas, especially with open radioactive substances, we need a kettle. Shall we? Yes. Probably size XXL or something like that. Yes, with as many buttons as possible. Let's see. I'll take off my jacket. I'll hang it up here. Can I put it on here? Yes. Okay. Let's try it out. I'll put on a kettle like that. That's exciting. These are buttons like a shirt. Isn't that stupid? If you're standing in the flames, can't you tear them up and run away? In view of how often I'm busy sewing these buttons back on, no. I already understand. So tearing them up is possible. Exactly. Now we get the last button. For personal reassurance, dosimeter. The students work here with so little radioactivity. Theoretically, we wouldn't need that at all. But it is prescribed that everyone should check their dosimeter. So here's a button. Yes. Perfect. The staff, in quotation marks, the teachers, get such film posters. They are evaluated monthly. All right. There was never anything out of it in 11 years now. That's very good. So, let's start in the training laboratory for the bachelor's program. Where we mainly deal with measuring technology. Yes. But the first thing I find exciting is that it's not a steel door or something. It's just solid wood or something. Exactly. So steel doors would be used in the high activity area. Here, for what we do here with the students, we wouldn't need a control area. However, it is not possible to implement it differently because of the regulations. So either in the control area with the corresponding rules or not. Okay. And since they work here with open radioactive substances, with a control area. All right. Plus, we could, if we wanted to, work here. Yes, I understand. Okay, what is done standardly? Standardly in the internship, what all students learn is what happens when ionizing radiation hits matter. That was a bit more detailed than you learn at school. At school, you learn the sunburn, for example. For example. Yes. That's a very bad example. Yes, UV radiation in this case. The individual detectors. The human body does not have any sensors for radioactive radiation. That's why you have to deal with the detectors a bit, even though you are a chemist. Yes, for example, we have the classic example that everyone knows from films and television and everything else. Is the good old Gaga Möller cell. Which basically consists of nothing but this aluminum cap with a wire in it. Thank God we have everything in broken. Then we can take a look at it in broken from the inside. Yes, this window up here is obviously broken. Yes, and you can also see that the only thing in there, which you probably can't see very well, I don't know, is this wire here. The housing and the wire are anode and cathode. And when an ionizing radiation particle triggers an event in the housing, that is, energy is deposited in it, we can pull it off via applied voltage and produce a measuring signal from it. Okay, is the measuring signal visual or acoustic? The typical clacking that you hear from Chernobyl videos or something like that. The clacking? There are measuring systems that clack because their electronics clack. Something like this, for example. There are dynodes in there and when they are controlled, they make a noise. The Gaga Möller counter itself does not make a noise. The noise is there so that a person who uses the Gaga Möller counter in a more dynamic environment, disaster protection, than in the laboratory, can hear and look elsewhere. We can do that with this device here. You can just press here, for example, when it starts to do something. Yes, exactly. Yes, and if you had something radioactive now, we can take something very simple. Yes, please. Thank you. My camera is still radioactive. This is a can of plastic fertilizer. Then you hear a slightly faster frequency marginally. You can also read it. You can read it, of course. However, with the Gaga Möller counters from the past, this was not possible. Then you only have a signal display with a height. Here, of course, that's digital. And, to be fair, this is a plastic scintillator. And here in front, for the dose-performance measurement, there is a very small Gaga Möller counter. Yes, okay. And if you want to have the proof now ... That looks exciting. ... that it rattles a little more, then you can hear that it goes faster. This is a point source. And if we go over the whole box now? You can do that. Ah, yes. I can already hear it. That's over the line now. That was probably ... No. That was this one. That was a point source. That's why it's also nicely behind lead. For all of us. How do I turn it off? I always tell the students first, please turn off the cracker box, because it's incredibly annoying when eight people are standing in here with these devices and measuring. I'll put it back in front. Yes, just put it down. Let's say what we just did is a nice example. For what you do in the studio afterwards. Yes, because it's also about how to protect yourself from ionizing radiation. Many are just ... unconscious or not, but that doesn't count fear of it, because they just don't understand what's going on. Yes. And the easiest thing you can show with it, we just did it de facto, is distance. Yes, I mean, it's actually logical. The further you are away from something, the less dangerous it is. However, if you don't even register that you are just somewhere where it could be dangerous because you don't have a sense organ, you don't know, you need detectors. You have to teach the student, for example, people, if you measure, here are a bunch of other detectors, and you're done measuring, then just put the source back. Yes. These 40 centimeters reduce the dosage, that is, the particles that hit you and can cause anything in your body reduces significantly if you keep a distance of half a meter. Yes. Yes, if I leave them, the source stays here in front and they also write their measuring data here or type them into the detector. Or what kind of shielding material do I have to use so that I'm safe from the source? Yes. We'll look at that later, too. We can show that later, too. In the next video, we'll go into the different radiation types, alpha, beta, gamma, how to shield them, how to detect them. But that will also be important for another video, because I have cesium, potassium, bismuth and an uranium mineral with me. And we'll measure what they have on them in terms of radiation. But we'll do that in the next video. Now it's exciting to see what else is being done here, what else is there to offer. Let's go into the side rooms. We are now in a room that is more like a laboratory. That's a little slide, because in the recording we are in the room next door. We are currently discussing a lot of theory. But don't worry, in the course of the video we will also come to this room. Then you will be able to take a look at that, too. Just a little bit in advance, fight through the theory, or just preview it, and then you'll be like us. Perfect. When we're done with that, we'll put them away again. Yes, everything is better behind lead. But why don't you put a lead plate on top of it? First of all, it's lead. And secondly, that's how strong they shine around you. Okay, all right. Gallagher-Müller counters are literally stupid. They can only count. So that's why every time someone in a movie identifies a nuclide with a Gallagher-Müller counter, that's stupid. You can do that, but it's extremely time-consuming and no one will do it. Today you do spectroscopic analysis with scintillation counters, and that's something students also do, and with semiconductor detectors. Calium-40 is pretty nice and simple because calium, which we will measure in a moment, we can just count and we can do it spectroscopically, is a naturally occurring element that we all have in our bodies and that we measure a lot. And it has a radioactive isotope. Only one, which is naturally occurring in the isotope mixture. That's calium-40. It has a very strong gamma line and you can measure it very easily. Okay, and calium-40 breaks down into argon. Was that important? Calium-40 breaks down into calcium. Okay, we can just read that through here. How is this board called? This is the nuclear map. It's a nuclear map. It's a periodic system. It looks different. You can take it as a periodic system, you can understand it as a coordinate system On the x-axis the number of neutrons is applied and on the y-axis the number of protons is applied. And that means hydrogen, helium, lithium all one after the other. That goes up to 105 and that back there is already at 113, I think. Because the stable ones are not so important for us here. I understand. Okay, next lab. Next lab. After we explained to the students how to measure it we use the radioactive substances for chemical reactions in nuclear chemistry. Yes, and now it's getting interesting. Yes, it looks a lot like a lab. Okay. So, a lab-like room. It almost looks like chemical chemistry in inorganic chemistry. But it's something else. Yes, we do a lot of chemical chemistry. There is a lot of inorganic chemistry here. We need the boxes to have a more defined volumetric current so that if dust should form which the students can't do with what we do it will be removed. And apart from that we mainly use the radioactive substances here to determine the efficiency of a chemical process. For example, what happens if I try potassium permanganate out of the manganese 7 the manganese 4 and the manganese 2 to get it out. It's pretty unique. The effect is called cellar chalmos. If I irradiate manganese with neutrons a different level of oxidation is created and I can isolate it. So we can separate isotopes which we as chemists can't do. Can we have a look? How it looks in general. These are the absorptions that can be adjusted. These are the point absorptions if someone has to do something on the table. How does it look on the work surface? Everything is clean. The students learn that not only to work cleanly but also to check the workplace. They run around at the end of the internship with this yellow hand counter. There are three on the other side and check their workplace. They only work actively in these bowls. Out here it's just back and forth to the detector. Unfortunately it's not that nice. You should have the detector next to you on the work surface but since they do chemical experiments the detectors like concentrated salts but not so much. Of course. That's why we have to have a split between safety and training. I see here these typical threads like red do they sell radionuclides? No. Where do you get them? With the appropriate approval you get them in Germany for example from GE Healthcare. So there are very few. If the radionuclides are not natural but artificial then most of them are for medical or technical applications and they are produced either in nuclear reactors or in large cyclotrons. In Germany we only have one nuclear reactor that produces radionuclides and that's the IBM Zoo in Munich. And because of the low activity in the natural rock you can't start anything for the internship. You would have to measure for a long time. Ok, I understand. We mainly work with iodine. Radioactive iodine. The iodine that is used for shield crystal therapy. If we don't need short-lived radionuclides then we can use something like this. This is high-performance petroleum. The original form of a radionuclide generator is a radium drinker. In the past when you didn't know that much and in fact this is still done today but with a lot more medical applications because in the 10s and 20s of the last century you could buy them. If you had problems with lung diseases or stomach problems then in the morning you took a cup and drank it. What emanates from this capsule is a radium. Radium-226. And this was sold as a cure. But the medical application was not cured? No, no. It definitely works And here that was lead, right? Yes, that's lead. Just like you can go to radon therapy in a certain grotto. In a grotto there is a pesh blender or similar minerals and radon emanates from it and then you inhale radon. But this also under medical application and not just Some words are so funny. Something like lead bricks. That's cool, right? Probably ten times as much. Yes, pesh blender. Be careful. Dude. They are then put together for which they have these wheels. We build sarcophagus with it. Yes, I told you, some words are funny. Our neutron source is only made of lead bricks. You pack them one by one and then you save the gym for a day. Sure, you save the gym but you probably have to go to the physio first. It's all lead. Wow. But what comes next? So, very quickly for the viewers. They were just thrown into the middle of the conversation. We are back in the previous room and we are looking at things made of lead. This is a germanium detector. Yes. And to shield the detector from the radiation from the cosmos as well as from our building materials i.e. uranium and thorium isotopes in building materials and cosmogenic radiation, gamma radiation from space the detector is packed in lead. So that's actually not to protect us from the source that we measure on the detector but so that we only measure the source and not what's around us. Yes. Since uranium naturally occurs on the planet in the crust of the earth we have it everywhere. Yes. So gallium detector what does it mean? Half-light detector. Yes, so that means that it is the substance from which the detector consists. This is a crystal, germanium is here. What we can also show for example here is austentite a very old sample. What shines so beautifully greenish yellowish is a uranium mineral. However, where the famous assumption comes from that uranium shines green from certain cartoon series it comes from something else namely that if you turn off UV light you have to come in from above. That's too dark. And that's where this ominous green light comes from. Yes, so it fluoresces in a very nice green. What we see here is natural uranium. Natural uranium is rolled in there. Yes, and we will now show why we have been talking about lead all the time because lead shields very well and we can now show that. Can we turn on the beeping again? Now you can see both. The device is able to distinguish between alphas and betas and gammas and now you can see what the measured value is. Why is it called natural uranium? Natural uranium comes in a natural state as a mixture of oxides that is U3, U8 in different oxidation levels and that is not enriched uranium but also not enriched uranium. What is sold in Germany is often the remains from the uranium enrichment as a mineral. But that is a different isotope from U235 to U238. That is why it is called natural isotope as it is in nature. Okay, and we will use that to compare it. Let's put the detector over it. Let's do it like this. Let's look at the upper line. That is the value for alpha. Can you show what it looks like? There is a good measurement. You can hear it very clearly. You have to say it clearly. It is completely harmless. But you can't hear it. In radioactivity we measure atoms. But an atom and what it looks like when it breaks down is the question. Okay, now we have a piece of paper in between. Let's look at the alpha value. The alpha value is up here. It is zero. Alpha radiation was completely shielded with a piece of paper. And the change in beta and gamma is also zero. The sheet of paper shields our alpha part. But beta and gamma are not shielded at all. Okay. The same would be done with nitrile gloves or cellulose. The question is still why we are talking about lead. I hope we can clarify that now. Okay, now there is lead between the detector and the natural uranium. Alpha radiation is completely shielded. Beta radiation is also very low, but not zero. Now we have to look at the detector. Ah, okay. We have radioactivity everywhere. That's why we have to first look at our zero effect. Whatever you call it. Okay, we have compared that. Then it is zero. Why lead? Gamma radiation is electromagnetic radiation. That means like light, like X-rays. And if we imagine that like a net, like a grid, then our body consists of a lot of nothing. We have the atomic nucleus, we have the electrons, and in between there is nothing. Except for theoretical physicists. That means if the electromagnetic wave itself, depending on which part of a certain equation one believes, either has a mass or does not, then this very, very, very, very, very, very, very small particle, sometimes yes, sometimes no, just flies through a lot of nothing. That means, if that should hit anything at all, as many electrons and as many atomic nuclei as possible have to be in the way. Then you have something with a high order number, i.e. with a high number of protons, an equally high number of electrons and a high density. And commercially, you have to say it fairly, the most common element that you can have for this is lead. Okay. So you take lead for shielding from gamma radiation. If you don't have room and need even higher densities, you can use uranium. For shielding? Yes. Uranium has a higher density than lead, is much more often represented in the earth's crust than, for example, osmium, which has a much higher density. The most expensive metal there is. That was on purpose. Yes. That would be the best, but no one can afford that. But if you don't have room and have a high density, all the things are pretty heavy. The whole germanium detector over there with the lead is 800 kilos. Okay. If you want to have a low subsurface, you need a lot of lead. Okay, good. The next question, which is probably very interesting for many, is what happens with the things that are radioactive. How do you dispose of radioactive substances? The legal rules are very strict. You can only dispose of radioactive substances when they are within certain limits. Thank God, there is a possibility that you can think about it. If we use substances with a short half-life, in most cases, storage is enough. For example, paper towels, gloves, which we have to use because we work openly with radioactive substances. We use a substance that is J131 to mark mainly. It has a half-life of 8 days. That means we just wait three months. It disposes of itself. And with the normal chemical waste, it can dispose of it according to the rules for chemicals. Where is it stored? Where are these three months stored? Not in the lab, but in the basement? We have a room where we can store the substances until we dispose of them. And our liquid waste must all be checked. Yes. The intermediate storage looks like in a series. That means we have to go down with the camera. Come with me. Another room. Here you can see that in the other areas there was no lead at all. And here we have a little more lead. These are so-called lead arcs. That's correct. That's really what it means. I thought it was a joke. No, it's not a joke. Here students work with radionuclide generators. But they don't look as beautiful as the blue glass in the medical field. And we are researching how ... We can look in here because there is nothing here. The whole system is clean because the generator is gone. That looks really good. The only thing we have to do is put the slide down again, because there is an alarm. How heavy would that be? What is written here? Each of the bricks weighs about 11 kg. So about 200-300 kg. And you said that there would be an alarm if we didn't put it down. That means one of many safety precautions. Exactly. We have directed air flow in all rooms and in the registrar himself. If I have an acid-sodium extraction or an extraction where you work with organic substances, it is regulated in the same way that the reactions and gases generated are pulled away from the worker. It's the same here. But it can also be radioactive in our laboratory. And here in the laboratory there is generally underpressure? Exactly. So both through the window to the inside and from the colleagues next door. The nuclear physics is next door. They are allowed to work with radioactive substances, but not open. They only have calibration sources. In the meantime, the camera always shows what we are talking about. With the extraction through the window. Yes. Now I have to play cameraman for 5 minutes. Exactly, but now it goes to the intermediate warehouse and you can go in there. Exactly. We go here into the warehouse. Our calibration sources are normally stored in cabinets or, if they are strong gamma rays, in a safe. If you go down here now, you come to our catch-and-release system. Here you can see the barrels that are prepared for disposal and the waste water tanks with individual extraction stations in which the liquid waste can be tested. Down here we actually see normal garbage bags in which the waste from the laboratory is stored for about 3 months and then it is disposed of as household waste because it is normal clean gloves and paper towels. Okay. We have arrived in the first room of the lock. We have to measure ourselves I stop explaining and you do it best. You say what is going on here. We have to check if we have something on our hands and feet when we go out here. The bags remain in the control area anyway as well as, for example, the protective glasses if they are our personal. That's why we have to check everything that comes out beforehand that it didn't stand and since we work with our hands and go down work paths we check the hands and feet first. Should I put it on? Exactly, put it on once between this white hump with the feet and also with the hands wait 10 seconds not contaminated. Perfect. With the students I sometimes put a radioactive source under it and they can find out for themselves why. In radiation protection courses where you practice this practically it is done in a way that you have these small bags with the source then you take the como and start to search the body where the contamination is and then proceed accordingly. Here it is just to make sure that you don't have anything on your fingers when you go out for lunch to eat something. If there is no activity on the hands or feet then we are in the chemistry lab so the normal rules apply wash your hands and then take off your coat and then we can go out. Okay, perfect. Before we do that, we will stand here for a minute or two and talk about when you can enter this lab yourself. This is a specialist university where students are offered and how do you get into the study program? You have the prerequisites. Is there a very high NCE? Do you have to have a bachelor's degree? No. Many specialist graduates come here but also specialist degrees in technical chemistry for example. We have a lot of graduates here. There is no NCE and in the nuclear chemistry you come in the fifth semester as a permanent part of the study program. It is also a bit different because we do a lot of analytics here and the molecular spectroscopy is also in the fifth semester and that adds up a bit. And the course is simply chemistry? Chemistry and nuclear physics. You would have called it earlier. Yes, today applied chemistry in the bachelor's degree. Okay, and then there is a detailed master module. Exactly, if we stay in the nuclear field then there is the master nuclear applications. There are certain access requirements insofar as there is a grade 2.5 and that it should be a course from which you come suitable for the content of the master's degree. We have graduates for example from chemistry, from our biomedicine technology, we have mechanical engineers, we have electricians, physicists, very extremist air and space technology in between. There is actually a measuring technology course for analytical measuring technology which also includes radiation technology which of course also comes here in between. So, very broadly specialized. And what else is done in your master? Is it in German or in English? That is perhaps also an important question. It is in English. It is also a master of science. Yes, so it is not engineering. And there are the nuclear basics for everyone. So there are so many different courses of study that come here that have to be continued. And nuclear knowledge is also not a prerequisite. So that's why I get the nuclear basics first. That's nuclear physics, that's nuclear chemistry, that's radiation protection and then it goes on. And you can specialize mainly in the area of nuclear chemistry, medical applications, i.e. imaging processes, CT, MRT, radiology and then the technical applications where energy production also belongs or reconstruction and a specialization course that really deals exclusively with reconstruction and how this reconstruction is built up. Yes, mostly these four specializations we have. Thank you for the information. Thank you for the nice introduction and that I was allowed to take all the viewers with me. We will now shoot two more videos that will also come online immediately after this video. So immediately means in the same month. And then we'll see each other again for the videos. We will measure cesium, cadmium, bismuth and a uranium mineral and then we will go into a further video on alpha-beta-gamma radiation as we have already teased it a bit with the lead and the paper. We'll do that in a little more detail and then hopefully we'll see each other again in the next videos. Thank you very much to my channel members without whom such long projects would hardly be possible. The time required for long videos is really immense for me. If you want to see more videos like chemicals and laboratory-required videos, take a look around the member area.