Slashdot Mirror
United Nuclear
goombah99 writes "Hey Mr. Science, need a rocket pack for your bicycle? Look no further than United Nuclear scientific supply where under their dangerous products category you can purchase your own radioactive uranium ore, as well as a two million volt generator if you need one. Or what mad scientist can do without his own particle accelerator (which they advertise can mutate DNA in seed, explore the atom, or simply transmute elements)"
Actually, handwashing helps get rid of any particles that may be on your skin.
The depleted uranium used in weapons can be easily and verifiably shown to produce no hazardous levels of radiation. As far as I know, the amount of radiation produced by depleted uranium is indistinguishable from background.
People that claim that depleted uranium caused their illnesses are mistaken. The cancer rate among people exposed to depleted uranium is the same as that of the population. Any appearence of depleted uranium-caused illnesses is an illusion, just like the Gulf War syndrome. (Studies show that the symptoms of Gulf War syndrome are just as common among people who were not in the Gulf War.)
-Splat
I actually got this info from an interview I saw with an Army General (I think he was a general) who was incharge of the DU risk factor investigation team, and once he turned in his report it was tossed aside because we were already into destert storm. From what I hear he retired and is leading a movement to look into it in a more open manner.
Just saying I beleived what he said and the other reports they showed on the program.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
Who would you trust? How about The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists?
Insightful?
Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. You're more radioactive than an equivalent mass of DU, because of the carbon-14 and other trace radioisotopes in your body.
World Heath Org has a little fact sheet about DU (close enough to uranium ore for a /. posting I think. After DU is refined to contain almost nothing but uranium and these rocks are mostly rocks with a little uranium.)
Some highlights
Of the uranium that is absorbed into the blood, approximately 70% will be filtered by the kidney and excreted in the urine within 24 hours; this amount increases to 90% within a few days.
In a number of studies on uranium miners, an increased risk of lung cancer was demonstrated, but this has been attributed to exposure from radon decay products. Lung tissue damage is possible leading to a risk of lung cancer that increases with increasing radiation dose. However, because DU is only weakly radioactive, very large amounts of dust (on the order of grams) would have to be inhaled for the additional risk of lung cancer to be detectable in an exposed group. Risks for other radiation-induced cancers, including leukaemia, are considered to be very much lower than for lung cancer.
Due to its high density, about twice that of lead, the main civilian uses of DU include counterweights in aircraft, radiation shields in medical radiation therapy machines and containers for the transport of radioactive materials. The military uses DU for defensive armour plate.
Erythema (superficial inflammation of the skin) or other effects on the skin are unlikely to occur even if DU is held against the skin for long periods (weeks).
Gah.
Saying a kilogram of plutonium in a water supply could kill thousands of people is like saying the water in the oceans could kill every person on earth. Technically, it's true, if you divided it up into nice doses and deposited it specifically in the body where it could do the most harm, you'd kill a bunch of people, but that's not going to happen just by drinking the stuff.
Chemically, plutonium follows pathways similar to calcium. If you ingest it in a readily absorbable form, it can wind up in the bone marrow, and there it can do bad things. But most forms aren't readily absorbable; divide it finely enough to dissolve in water, and you're going to end up with plutonium oxide, which isn't readily absorbable and won't stay around in the body too long. There were accidents during the Manhattan Project of workers inhaling significant quantities of plutonium, and their death rates by lung cancer weren't any different from the norm. It's a very bad idea to ingest plutonium, but that's probably due more to its heavy metal toxicity than to its radiological hazards.
The water in the oceans could kill far more people than a bomb would, also, if you split it into handy 2-liter doses and crammed it into everyone's lungs.
It's not only an alpha emitter, however. Plutonium undergoes significant spontaneous fission, and depending on the fission mode can spit out betas, gammas, or neutrons depending on its whims.
And by comparison, bananas shoot off about 3500 pCi/kg from Potassium-40. Beer, about 400, and beef about 3000. Some nuts, about 7000 pCi/kg from Radium-226. A Ci is a curie, 3.7 * 1010 disintegrations per second.
So that bunch of bananas sitting on your kitchen counter is bombarding you with about 130,000 beta particles each second. Natural uranium has an activity level of 0.7 pCi/g, so a kilogram of uranium sitting on your counter would be spitting 26,000 alphas at you in that time frame. And, of course, organic matter has a natural activity of 6 pCi/g due to carbon-14, so you yourself are releasing, oh, about 15 million disintegrations per second (3.7E10 disintegrations per second per curie * 1E-9 curies per picocurie * 6 pCi per gram * 70,000 grams per average adult male).
Just for comparison's sake.