4 ms·
You are forgetting concentration. C14 isn't a significant issue because only one in every trillion carbon atoms is C14 - the rest is stable. Meanwhile, high-le
by crote 3y ago
You are forgetting concentration. C14 isn't a significant issue because only one in every trillion carbon atoms is C14 - the rest is stable.
Meanwhile, high-level nuclear waste is a densely concentrated soup of spicy elements, all neatly packed together to provide a really bad day to anyone stumbling onto it.
- WalterBright 3y agoIf it's densely concentrated, it can be spread out. If it's concentrated enough, it's still a source of usable energy.
- ben_w 3y agoWith an unfortunate chasm between the two: the "immediate coma, you don't wake up before you bleed to death everywhere inside and out" level of radiation is an absorbed dose of a mere few tens of joules of ionising radiation per kilogram of body mass.
- flangola7 3y agoThe sun deposits over a thousand joules every second onto every square meter.
- ben_w 3y agoI put the words "ionising radiation" in specifically to avoid this kind of well, actually. Almost none of the sunlight that gets through the air is ionising, and yet despite the biological defences aimed specifically at what remains, sunlight still gives us cancers in the exposed areas.