Comments by "George Reynolds" (@karhukivi) on "Asianometry" channel.

Galicia (NW Spain) or Sri Lanka has even more annual rainfall... They selected Ireland because they are in the euro zone and speak English! Oh, and the industrial development authority threw bucketfuls of money at them, even though they are already a profitable business.
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The Bolivian Government has indicated that they would "do with lithium what the OPEC nations did with oil" i.e. limit supplies to make the price rise and maximise their income from supplying it, which is a perfectly good reason for any country to restrict exports, as well as protecting their own industry. They can make more money from the added value of downstream products compared to just selling the raw material. Same reason some farms supply cheese and yoghurts instead of just milk.
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@commie5211 However, gallium and germanium are not rare earth elements and they are found in many locations, which was the point I didn't make very well!
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That is fluorescence, not scintillation. If you want to see scintillation, look at the luminous hands of an old radioactive watch with a strong lens, you will see the individual scintillations of the alpha particles striking the phosphor.
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@DrDeuteron Most scintillators will also fluoresce . But if for example you have a ZnS screen and bombard it with alpha particles, there will be a succession of flashes which translate into pulses in a PMT. I would not consider that as fluorescence. A bit like the distinctions between killing, murder and dying, it depends on the circumstances!
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Mining in third world countries might be polluting, but not in a modern country with strict H&S and environmental controls plus an educated workforce watched over by union bosses who are always ready to defend their workers. The EU is infested with greens, that is the reason "they" try to outsource mining, which makes the EU dependent on other countries like Russia an China, with the negative consequences that can have.
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Germanium occurs with zinc in many deposits around the world, so it is not difficult to locate supplies. I saw a video where a lump of germanium about the size of a football was in the safe of a semiconductor company and the CEO said there was enough there to keep them producing semiconductors for a century.
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@morganangel340 The amounts of these metals required to make semiconductors is small.
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@morganangel340 Absolutely true! If you produce milk for $100/pint who would buy it?
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@agsystems8220 The problem is energy density - the same amount of energy in a very small volume becomes very like an explosive. The energy density of a typical lithium battery is not far off that of TNT. A cabin crew neighbour told me she has dealt with 3 on-board fires in smartphones, usually by putting them in a metal cocktail shaker!
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A bit nit-picking I know, but 511 KeV radiation is not "high-energy" gamma radiation, rather it is on the low end of the gamma radiation range of 300 to 3000 KeV.
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Nevertheless, the 511 peak will be apparent in the output spectrum of a typical PMT-NaI detector. The Compton scattering produces a "tail" on the low energy side. The pulse energy discriminators in the spectrometer will separate the 511 peak with about 6% efficiency. It is analogous to the "characteristic" energy of an X-ray tube, a strong "peak" and a tail.
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That is probably what is behind so many "protest" movements - certain countries want us (USA + EU) to become dependant upon imports, oil, gas, critical minerals and to ban nuclear. Then, in the event of a war, economic or shooting, we would become very vulnerable. Just like the WW1 & WW2 naval blockades. This is a long-term stealth strategy. Back in the 70s Europe realised how dependant we were on OPEC nations to supply oil and gas and the EEC then promoted exploration around Europe. Then they took their eye off the ball and we have become dependant again.
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