It stands to reason that a piece of coal will give intense heat when burned fast in a blast furnace, but will not boil a cup of soup when it slowly smoulders for many hours. Quite similarly, a radioactive element with a long halflife must radiate at a low level quite simply because it spreads its energy over a long time: specific activity (activity per gram of the radioactive element) is inversely proportional to its halflife.
The halflife of uranium is 4.6 billion years (that's why there is so much left of it on the earth), so that its own radiation is quite negligible, and what little radiation does emanate from it is due to the shortlived elements that are created in its natural decay chain
¾ such as the radon daughters which the press barons and press morons are beginning to discover, but not yet in connection with energy conservation.GRAPHIC: A02_8602.TIF
Now terms like "specific activity of 3 picocuries per gram" are impressive to drop at a cocktail party, but they have nothing to do with the argument, whose essence can be grasped by a five-year old who has seen water seep slowly out of a leaky container and flow quickly out of a bucket. But such intellectual maturity is not within reach of the average American journalist, as the samples show. Would these reporters believe that uranium
¾heavier than lead and radiating very weakly¾is used as a material in protective shields to screen radiation (from cobalt sources in industry, for example)? Of course not: they do not check for logical reasons; they are given to the trust-and-parrot method.Uranium hexafluoride is a chemical combination of uranium and fluor; to call it "a form of uranium" is an interesting linguistic innovation: kitchen salt is a form of chlorine, and Mr. Jonathan Dahl a form of incompetence. The uranium in the "radioactive cloud, had a specific activity about ten times smaller than the carbon 14 in his blood, and some ten million times smaller than that of the potassium 40 in his buttocks.
Laurie P. Cohen, too, exhibits the trademark of the American reporter: to scare herself and her readers with "radioactive" and other long words she does not understand. But let me tell you that she is known to have practiced osculation on more than one occasion; it has even been suggested ("sources say") that she has engaged in osculatory activities with her own mother.
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Vol. 13, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 13, No. 6 Date: November 29, 2004 03:59 PM Title: Review of a review
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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