Jim Tabor on sat 18 jan 03
I had more attention from law enforcement than I ever because of my uranium.
Last spring I got a lot of info from Clayart about uranium because I
needed to discard about a pound that had come to me (at school) with a
few truck loads of donated ceramic materials . One email cited the
$1700.00 paid by their school to dispose of it. After talking to NRC
contacts around the country and not finding anyone to take it (tuperware
was not it's original container and it lacked the pedigree required), I
hid it on my sister's 400 acres until someone suitable would take it.
John Williams, at Trinity Ceramic Supply in Dallas said he would like to
have it.
My road trip from Tulsa to Dallas was delayed 3 1/2 hours by 5 cars of
officers from the sheriffs department when I went to retrieve the
uranium from the forest. As I wondered in the woods, a good neighbor saw
my car parked at the gate and was suspicious enough to park his truck
behind me to block my car. My girlfriend was waiting in the car and he
asked her why we were there. She told him I was just getting some
uranium I had stored on the property. The sheriff was on his way before
I got back to the car. The "good neighbor" and I had a somewhat heated
discussion which was repeated a few more time with different officers. I
tried to convince them with the emails from Clayart on my laptop
computer that I did have the right to have uranium and transport it.
They were not convinced.
The ranking officer called every agency in his book and had the
department looking for testing equipment to determine what to do.
Engineers from Sun Oil finally arrived with testing devices to measure
the radioactivity. Within an inch of the material, they got a reading. A
dental x-ray is about 10,000 times more radioactive than the uranium I
had. I was given the uranium and sent on my way. I thanked the neighbor
for looking after my sister's property. The area had looked like a major
crime scene to all the people driving by and reminded me of Officer Obie
with the trash problem in the film Alice's Restaurant.
I was happy to know the radioactive reading was so low and believe the
emails were helpful to inform the officers and neighbor that the uranium
was a ceramic grade material I was knowledgeable of and they were
thankful I was putting it in good hands rather than dumping it.
Jim Tabor
http://www.members.cox.net/taborj/index.html
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