Gsbt

It’s widely known that a smoke detector is a good ionizing radiation source, as they contain a small amount of americium-241, a side product of nuclear reactors. But what about other sources? [Carl Willis] got hold of an old Soviet era smoke detector and decided to  tear it down and see what was inside . This, as he found out, isn’t something you should do lightly, as the one he used ended up containing an interesting mix of radioactive materials, including small amounts of plutonium-239, uranium-237, neptunium-237 and a selection of others. In true hacker fashion, he detected these with a gamma ray spectroscope he has in his spare bedroom, shielded from other sources with lead bricks and copper and tin sheets. The high-energy gamma ray detector that Carl Willis used to analyze the soviet smoke detector, located in his spare bedroom. He digs further into this analysis, using the ratio of plutonium to americium to determine the age of the source, concluding that the ra...