Used to work in the photonics industry once upon a time, and one time against my better judgement but under the boss's direct orders, I used the double sided version to secure 3" square quartz plates to a steel fixture for cutting with a .010" diamond wheel. After the first few disasters involving shattered quartz and destroyed diamond cutoff wheels, my boss agreed that bees wax had a superior adhesion quality and decided to wait for the order to arrive from the source. On-time production was important, but doing it right was more so and a lot less expensive.
Mercury spills? Hmmm... Never thought of using tape for mercury spills.
At the same job we also used a lot of mercury to charge the lamps we produced. Usually, when we spilled mercury (we tried not to) we would get as much of it as we could with broom and dustpan, then freeze the tiniest bits with liquid nitrogen to make them like sand grains and then sweep them up with a hand brush.
I guess I should point out that I often handled kilos of the stuff at a time and on several occasions swallowed some of it--which could explain the logic behind some of my posts. (Really it was triple distilled mercury and you could theoretically swallow up to a kilo of the stuff without harm. Or so the doctor told me the first time I panicked and ran to the emergency room.)
btw: LN is an amazing dusting compound. I would sometimes use it when the boss wasn't around to clear the shop floor of dust. Kind of cool to watch it boil across the floor then disappear, leaving a man-made dust bunny against the wall for clean up. But again, a little more expensive than a mop and a bucket of water.
...and I didn't pay enough attention to the material used for some access panels I was removing from a system.
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