[Central Scrutiniser]

I read that book last year, quite an interesting story.

You can do a lot with a few hundred chips of americanium from smoke detectors and a few thousand lantern mantles.

[RadioAstronomer]

few thousand lantern mantles.

The new ones no longer contain Thorium. I used to use lantern mantles to test my scintillator until I bought a Cesium 137 source. :-)

[ClaudiusI]

Unfortunately the book was written by some liberal luddite bastard. The moral of the story seems to have been "science is bad".

[RadioAstronomer]

FYI, You can buy all kinds of radioactive sources thru the mail.

I bought a Cs₁₃₇, Co₆₀, and a Sr₉₀ test kit this way.