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Underwater habitats could probably be made with plastic still. Under a few hundred feet, radiation will probably drop off enough to not cause damage. Of course
by goda90 6y ago
Underwater habitats could probably be made with plastic still. Under a few hundred feet, radiation will probably drop off enough to not cause damage. Of course corrosion becomes a new problem to fight.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> Under a few hundred feet, radiation will probably drop off enough to not cause damage. At a few hundred feet, a structure able to hold off the water pressure would probably be thick enough to hold off the radiation if installed on the surface. In rough numbers, the mass of air above us now is equivalent to about 10m depth of seawater. A few hundred feet, call it 100m, would be like having ten atmospheres worth of radiation absorption above us. We need not go that far. Relatively thin engineered coatings on glass/plastic sheets would be as effective at blocking the extra UV.
- war1025 6y agoIsn't water a ridiculously effective radiation shield? I thought I saw a web comic once claiming that you could swim in a pool with radioactive waste and be just fine as long as you stayed X feet away, where X was on the order of a couple feet.
- SuoDuanDao 6y agoIt is one of the better ones, at nuclear plants the spent fuel is typically kept in what amounts to swimming pools as a cheap way to shield from the radiation.
- sandworm101 6y agoIt depends on the exact nature of the radiation. Note those pools. The dangerous radiation is blocked very well, but you can still see the stuff in the tank because light passes through water. Electromagnetic radiation isn't blocked by water as effectively as alpha/beta particles.
- SuoDuanDao 6y agoTrue, the pictures look pretty eerie (I had a professor whose first career was in nuclear reactors and he liked to show us pics). I imagine radiation that's dangerous is dangerous because it can impact a human body at a high speed, and we're mostly water, so...
- sandworm101 6y agoUV radiation is moving that the speed of light. So is infrared light, which is blocked by water rather well. What is dangerous are those things that are both fast and heavy, particles from radioactive decay.
- occamschainsaw 6y agoThis one? https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
- war1025 6y agoYup that looks like the one I had in mind.