Promethium has until now been the most prominent “hole” in our product lineup. For years we’ve been turning away customers looking to score a little of this near-mythical radioactive element. Google around and you’ll find that there were indeed some uses for promethium as recently as the 1970s. As a trace radioactive element it should be, in theory, no more harmful nor less accessible than radium. In practice, however, it’s been anything but.

Samples offered elsewhere reportedly containing promethium have consistently turned out to be radium-based that were mislabeled accidentally - if not with outright fraudulent intention - but lacking so much as a single atom of the genuine article.

There is, however, a legit outlet.

Swiss firm RC Tritec has been manufacturing luminous paints for nearly a century and are, to this day, involved in the production of small quantities of promethium. If they’re not the only company in the world to make it then they surely must be the only one to do so commercially - it goes without saying that government laboratories produce whatever they need without the burden of needing to report to the public.

In any case, procuring small quantities of Pm-147 is available to anyone willing to part with the cash and with the understanding that the quantities for sale are necessarily quite limited. In our case, the first lot we received was produced in February of 2023 and quickly rushed off to casting. With the very short half life the wisp of radioative material coating these sources is dwindling each passing day. Each source having started with 1.5 microcuries of promethium (or approximately 1.6 nanograms) the whole of that is constantly dissipating into energy and a little samarium-147, itself radioactive though much less so. The calculation of half lives yields a date 111 years into the future until the last of these atoms goes poof. Lest medical miracles yet to come save us from our expected life expectancies, it’s safe to assume this cube will have a little of this potent juice for the remainder of our lives.