Slashdot Mirror
Radiation Absorbing Mineral Found In the Arctic
An anonymous reader writes "A mineral has recently been found that exhibits the astounding property of being able to remove radiation from water-based solutions. 'After coming into contact with the mineral, radioactive water becomes completely safe. Had this mineral been available to physicists after the Chernobyl or Three Mile Island disasters, the consequences might have been very different, as both accidents resulted in contamination from radioactive water.' Also, the article notes that although only grams of the material have been found, tons of it are needed; they are confident they could artificially reproduce it."
Once again a Slashdot editor is fooled by pseudo-science.
My bullshit detector is going off. Yours should be too.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
Yes but showing the DANGER of nuclear energy through sensational media coverage is mandatory!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I thought radiation levels around 3 Mile Island never got more than twice background? Aernt there are plenty of normal places around the word (i.e. not uranium mines/dumps) where the levels are naturally higher?
There are plenty of places where water is naturally full of alligators, it doesn't mean it's okay or desirable to introduce crocs in places where there aren't any.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The article is very light on details. To remove "radiactivity" from water, you really need to remove radiactive substances from the water. So this mineral is what, like a filter that removes any and all molecular impurities from water, leaving only H2O molecules?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I need more detail to believe this. Radioactivity (in radioactive materials) is caused by the decay of unstable atoms into smaller ones, with a release of energy and high speed particles (aka radiation). Radiation isn't a chemical that you can just remove. Lots of things can absorb radiation, but the radioactive material just produces more. To quickly remove the radioactivity you would have to (1) remove the unstable isotopes, or (2) break them down into more stable forms, or (3) change something so that they do not break down using science fiction techniques. Since 3 is probably impossible for humans today, and 2 would cause a sudden large release of energy, the most probable way to do it is (1).
Unless they are talking about a chemical that precipitates the specific elements or isotopes that are responsible for the radioactivity (in which case why is this a new discovery?), I would suspect a hoax, or at least a gross mischaracterization of the discovery.
Is that another bad analogy I see? Oh yes... Ok, lets put it into perspective then. Based on the radiation dose people were exposed to from three mile island it was estimated that you could expect 0.5 cases of cancer as a result. I.e, there was a 50% chance that one person might develop cancer due to the radiation at some part during his/her life. Now, start comparing it to risks we accept every day. The risk of getting cancer from the Sun's UV rays. The risk of getting killed when you cross the road. The risk from fossil fuel emissions. The risk of drowning in a hydroelectric dam. The risk you will choke on a peanut... etc. Basically, if you don't think the risk from accidents like TMI is acceptable, you'd better not eat any solid food tonight, because there is a chance you will choke on it. Oh, and I wouldn't ever take a shower if I were you, you might slip and hit your head against the tub.
Usually, calling something a "disaster" implies that someone or something was negatively effected. The Three Mile Island "disaster" resulted in no impact to anyone or anything aside from causing electricity bills to rise.
Brett
It removes the radioactive isotopes from water, not the radiation itself.
Yeah, and what kind of radioactive material? Strontium and Cesium? Beta emitters? How about I-131? Or is it just heavy nucleotides? What about radioisotopes that happen to be toxic besides being radioactive?
I'll be happy to run the dosimetry for anyone who wants to experiment but you won't catch me drinking any radiation snake oil the Russians cook up...that doesn't start with a vat of potato peelings anyway.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This element has been discovered countless times before. It's common name is "Bullshitium" and it's used in turning lead to gold, eating up radiation, and can be used in pollution-less power plants.
There is only one way to "absorb" radiation, and everything does it already. Step outside and you're absorbing radiation.
Now, if there are radioactive particulates suspended in your water, you can filter those out with any sufficiently fine-grained filter. This is the most common form of radioactive water pollution.
Following that you have Tritium Oxide (HTO), which is a water-like substance made with H-3 isotopes (T). It's basically impossible to separate HTO from H20. It reacts no differently than plain old H or H-2(D), it just happens to have a few extra neutrons, and be a beta emmitter.
The tendency to emit radiation is completely irrelevant in terms of chemical reactions (unless you're using it as a catalyst); if your radioactive isotope is slutty with its electrons, then you can maybe dump something reactive into the solution for it to bind itself to, but in this case that's not going to happen...If it was easy to break H2 (or HT in this case) off of O, we'd all be driving Hydrogen cars.
So in short, either you can filter it out, or there is crap that you can do about it, because emmitting radiation isn't a property that can be used to bind anything...That's like saying you've found a mineral that will bind to a lightbulb.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Well, yes. But this is the new slashdot. It never lets science get in the way of a good marketing line.
Go ahead, mark me down, I don't mind losing my karma. Slashdot isn't worth much these day.
The NRC was justifiably worried that it was pure luck that nothing really bad happened. It's not right to call it a disaster, but neither would it be reasonable to write it off entirely. If the same thing were to happen often, there would be an actual disaster before long, and the NRC is supposed to prevent disasters, not just identify them after the fact.
Compared to all risks I endure, I can dance in front of a very bad shooter, if he has a 0,01% chance of hitting me fatally. Or if I do russian roulette with a 100-shot pistol with just one bullet.
So, there's no problem if I do any of this, right?
When I see people like it makes me hope you're trolling or being just a pawn for evil minds... I certainly hope that we humans can't reach such a low level in stupidity... but then again that would justify the existence of those Darwin awards...
The undamaged plant next to it was shut down as a precaution. The power the two plants generated was replaced by burning coal. Using the Office of Technology Assessment figures for premature deaths from coal burning, the accident itself killed 50 people every year from air pollution and coal mining, another 50 per year from the shutdown of the other reactor.
Coal has gotten cleaner over time, so you can't just multiply by the number of years since the accident, but it's still many hundreds of people dead.
And at this point I get the joke, feel like a retard, but nevertheless hit the Submit button. Cheers!