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16 comments on The Bullroarer - Saturday 13 July 2008
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16 comments on The Bullroarer - Saturday 13 July 2008
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If you don't mind the occasional dose of uranium or plutonium in your drinking water that's a great idea.
After you've convinced Hydro to try it out in Tassie first let us know how it goes.
If that's the worst kind of nuclear industry related accident the French can get it's not too bad though still unacceptable. Many places have small amounts of uranium in their drinking water, for example Adelaide's Myponga Dam.
Another 'sleeper' that has arisen recently is mercury in CFL bulbs. Next must be the plutonium derivative americium in most smoke alarms. Trashed CFL bulbs and smoke alarms go into landfills, rain falls, landfill leaks. Nobody worries.
As you know, what's important is not the total amount but the local concentration. There's a difference between consuming (say) 10g of arsenic over 50 years of life, and even 5g of arsenic over two days. One won't cause any problems, the other might kill you.
Unfortunately typical sloppy journalism isn't telling us much about this French accident. "75kg of liquid uranium"? I don't think so, there would have been a tremendous explosion of steam had 75kg of molten uranium metal struck water. 75kg of uranium hexafluoride? 75kg of water with some depleted uranium mixed in at 1ppm? 75kg of... Well, we don't know, they didn't tell us. So we can't really judge the level of danger we're talking about.
People certainly do worry about mercury in CFL. In fact, it's commonly an excuse for sticking with incandescents.
I don't about your smoke alarm, but mine is full of warnings not to bin it normally. And my local council has an annual toxic rubbish day, where they take solvents, old batteries, smoke alarms and so on.
Boof, if you ever feel like a holiday on the mainland, this could be right up your alley...
That's the controversial hormesis theory which among other things suggests residents of Colorado are healthier than those of Florida due to higher background radiation. Or maybe for completely unrelated reasons. However ingestion of unsafe material such as dust or water must be of greater concern.