Sound advice from the Billings Gazette, not the Sacramento Bee. I am unclear how that happened. No, I'm not drunk yet.

Why would you need to get out of your car? Them thar hills are glowing, you shouldn't even need headlights.

I got a solution, NUKE THE MINES!!!

People have this unnecessary fear of radiation. Look, it's not like you needed your testicles anyway...

I think everyone needs more radiation.

Do not stop, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

/hasn't read article....

Korag_The_Nasty

Even better, I like the quote stating "We're seeing unnatural levels of radiation".... Uhh, morons, it's a farking natural mine. OF COURSE ITS NATURAL! Unsafe, maybe, but there's nothing "unnatural" about it.

Yes, I'm a word-nazi.

Korag

Maybe it's because the uranium was BURIED and we had to dig MINES to get to it thus removing the natural shielding of the earth. And when the uranium is dug out and removed, there are still pilings of dirt that while not uranium have been exposed to the uranium and are radioactive.

Oops. Don't know how that got in the buffer. I was going to talk about the piles of dirt...called tailings. Lots of other heavy metal poison leaches out of those things.

See what just bringing it home did to me. I forgot how to properly close a tag.

2003-08-17 04:02:44 PM CrazyCurt


Sound advice from the Billings Gazette, not the Sacramento Bee. I am unclear how that happened. No, I'm not drunk yet.


LOL. When I read the tag I was thinking, "Dude, I didn't know we had uranium mines in Sacto..

Jesus.

It's not the uranium that's the problem. It's the radon, a daughter product of uranium decay. Pound for pound, *you* are more radioactive than natural uranium, due to the radioisotopes of carbon and postassium in your body.

It's not the uranium that's the problem. It's the radon, a daughter product of uranium decay. Pound for pound, *you* are more radioactive than natural uranium, due to the radioisotopes of carbon and postassium in your body.

yeah sure, but last time i check, it's okay to sit next to anyone (some people excluded).
it's the energy gamma boy.

Stories like these make this guy masterbate feariously

Is there any other kind of masturbation?

hmmmm. i live in south texas. family is in central texas. every year we go up state to visit family. years ago, when i was a kid, we noticed an enormous hole in the ground, just before the sarita check point. miles across, a mile deep. for years we would picnic down at the bottom, then we found out it was an abandoned uranium mine. we still do. it's cool.

I went to a Uranium once with my dad when I was a kid. Someplace in the north east. We both felt nauseus when we left... at the time I remembered wondering if it was mild radiation sickness... Probably just something in the air like mold though.

sheesh this is the 3rd article i read today, what a bunch of disappointing posts. this was the most boring of em all. Not to mention the headline was misleading as hell, i was expecting to read about some guy getting out of his car and getting eaten by the uranium monster

Yep, this whole weekend has totally sucked. I've been depressed, unmotivated and sickly feeling all weekend. I think because I've been sober the whole time cause I don't have any money cause I got in a fender bender and can't deliver pizza at the moment so I can't do anything fun, and last week my girlfriend decided not to be my girl or friend anymore. However watching "colors of war" on the history channel makes me happy i have nothing to do but lie on a couch being depressed. Better that than in a hole in the ground, terrified and uncomfortable.

oh but it looks like such a marvelous place to be having a picnic. I can just see there being a forest full of mutant squirrels with laser vision and frog tongues nearby.

Im not feeling to good either, but of course i am a teen so yeah im just over reacting to stupid things. I almost died of mercury poisoning, me and a friend found these cool little silver balls that felt like gel, yeah we sniffed em and everything but im here with o bug damage, i also sat in it. kinda fun. thats it peace

Yeah...but then there was this hole...and my pet frog jumped down it...and he got all huge and glowy, and I went down the hole after him and there was this box labeled "radioactive" in my back yard, and then I went down the hole and there was this sw33t armoured tank thing and a radsuit and...and...

wait. Nevermind. That was Blaster Master for the NES. What a storyline...nuclear waste just there in the yard, and battling monsters to get your pet frog back, that grows huge and tries to kill you at the end of the game...

Boredteen, what gave you the urge to sit in Mercury?

Mantour: Stories like these make this guy masterbate feariously

Here's a more appropriate pic. It's Ed Teller, Mr. H-Bomb himself.

I have become death destroyer of worlds

"With the demand for uranium dropping due to competition from overseas producers,..."

Scariest thing I've read in quite some time.

its ok to frolic in the mines as long as youre shielding yourself with a steel pot over the ol' applebag. just like in the movies.

fnord-
yes he is and a very smart guy too. BTW I really like his tie.

A millirem is a thousandth of a rem

am i the only one who doesn't know what a rem is?

I have three geiger counters, one of which I can wear on my wrist (and it's a timepiece, too!). Radiation is extra-bonus-spooky-mondo-scary to people who have no farking idea what it is.

I've got radiactive marbles fer crissake. And yeah, their radiation level is "far above normal". So was that x-ray you got last time you went to the dentist. That's why they made you wear the lead apron.

AAAIIIEEEE! Radiation! Run in circles! Scream and shout! AIIIEEEEE!

/pfft.

"am i the only one who doesn't know what a rem is?"

rem is short for remark. It's kinda like //, /*, or -- but for old school BASIC.

/smartass mode

CantThinkOfName: am i the only one who doesn't know what a rem is?

It's about 30 decistipes.

Actually when i was in school, my geology class got taken to an abandoned uranium mine.

"This is an example of how NOT to mine" the teacher goes.

Creeks poluted as fark. I think i got my yearly allowence of radiation that day, but as long as my sperm hasn't turn inside out - i'll say it was pretty cool.

rem is a pretentious little band from Athens.

- "Mayor West, you have lymphoma."

-- "I see..."

- "What in GOD'S name were doing rolling around in that nuclear waste?"

-- "I thought that it would give me super powers."

- "...Well that's just silly!"

-- "Silly, maybe. Idiotic, maybe......"

CantThinkOfName: am i the only one who doesn't know what a rem is?

There's this thing on the interweb they call "google"...

===
Roentgen Equivalent Man (rem): a unit of equivalent dose. Rem relates the absorbed dose in human tissue to the effective biological damage of the radiation. Not all radiation has the same biological effect, even for the same amount of absorbed dose.
===

HTH. HAND.

For those curious, a 'REM' stands for Roentgen Equivalent Man, or the amount of radiation it takes to deposit 1 erg of energy into one cc of what would be considered average human flesh (I know that sounds pretty vomit inducing, but that's what it means).

As for the limits stated in the article, they are way off. The Nuclear Regulatory Commision puts your safe exposure (not to exceed) 5 REM per year to the whole body. Chest x-rays are WAAAAYYYY more than what they said (I think it was 10 mrem). The EPA might put it at a certain limit, but the NRC rules what is safe and what isn't as far as radiation/contamination goes.

Obviously you want to keep your exposure as low as possible, but just so you know you get A LOT more than a piddly little 15 mrem per year just in your house. Smoke detectors (Americium-241), Beer and food rich in grain (Iodine-135), Cigarettes (huge Beta dose to the lungs from Beryllium if I remember right)...marble counter tops? Loaded with Uranium. Computer monitors, TV, and flourescent lights all give off Gamma doses, as do cell phones (not much there though).

Radiation is everywhere, it's part of our lives even though we don't realize it. Your body heals any cells killed by the stray gamma ray just like replacing dead skin, it's no big deal...as long as you don't recieve a massive dose. A massive dose is like 50 REM and up...50 REM will put you on the floor pretty quick and give you medical complications in many cases. 200 REM will kill you due to radiation poisoning slowly over a few months or so (read: horrible death). A shot of 400 REM and up will pretty much kill you before the day is over.

The established practice is to treat any unexpected contamination or levels above background (natural levels) as serious as it is the conservative thing to do...you're always safer going overboard just in case. That's all that's happening with this story. They're doing what they're supposed to do, and it appears an ignorant journalist has blown it out of proportion.

How do I know all this? I was a reactor operator on the USS Enterprise for 6 years and I now work parttime as a Radiological Safety technician at a Uranium plant. We make commercial grade reactor fuel, not the military stuff (which is much higher enrichment [read: high octane!]) One of our fuel pellets, about the size of the metal part at the end of a pencil, makes as much heat as 1750 lbs of coal, and it's perfectly clean. It comes in at around $10 per pellet. You do the math.

So when you see uneducated idiots protesting against nuclear power plants and the like, keep what you've learned in mind. Nuke power is the cleanest source of energy short of wind power we've got.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-power.htm

That link has some really cool info, good visuals so the average person can understand what happens in a reactor. The only piece of dated info you'll see is about the storage of spent fuel as it doesn't take into account a spanking new facility in the desert in Nevada (I think, might be New Mexico) for spent fuel storage.

I think its wonderful that the local press does such a wonderful job instilling yet another unfounded fear in the public. Saying background radiation can be up to 369 times more than normal without saying what "normal" is is just a tad bit irresponsible in my book.

"Oops. Don't know how that got in the buffer. I was going to talk about the piles of dirt...called tailings. Lots of other heavy metal poison leaches out of those things."

It sure does...

If the Wyoming mines are the ones I'm thinking of..I believe the Powder River mines are by Gillette WY, then there really isn't much danger of anyone accidentally driving by. The mines are so far out in the middle of nowhere that only lost antelope would ever stumble across them. Come to think of it, that pretty much describes Gillette itself.

Yellowcake is formed when ore is milled and uranium oxide is extracted

.mmmm... Cake.

Sounds like a cool idea for a movie

The MUTCD (a book that the feds use for the standardization of road signs) has a nifty sign, shown below:



The point of it is, as told here is if there is a nuclear disaster, and an area of severe contamination that people have to pass through, the Maintain Top Speed sign will indicate that people should just drive through, and not get out to pee.

Perhaps they need one at the site there.

Oops...that here is http://www.cardhouse.com/x08/topinfo.htm

I still don't understand why it is considered "news" that abandoned uranium mines are radio-active. I'm no nuclear physicist, but I am pretty sure that I could have told you that hanging out in an abandoned uranium mine is not the best way to avoid radiation.

There's an abandoned uranium mine in the middle of the most populated part of Grand Canyon National Park (on the south rim).

Nice post, TheGoblinKing

And for those that want to know, the reason you die slowly from radiation poisoning is the effect it has at the cellular level. When a radioactive particle hits a cell, it pretty much destroys whatever molecule it hits. In really heavy doses, this includes cell walls, mitochondria, cell nuclei, etc. Gamma radiation is the worst in that it can penetrate your entire body causing this kind of cellular damage evenly throughout the body. Alpha and beta radiation don't penetrate as well, they tend to do skin damage. Alpha particles are really really high in energy though so a large dose will burn the fark out of you.

A dose that isn't quite high enough to kill you outright will still make you die a long agonizing death due to the creation of peroxide molecules. Radioactive particles that hit a water molecule will split off hydrogen radicals. The remaining OH radicals can combine with each other for HOOH, or hydrogen peroxide...a potent cellular toxin.

On a small scale, it's not big deal, your body can cope. Once you get over 200 rem of exposure, you're in trouble.

The cancer risks are always there though, even with background radiation. When ionizing radiation hits a DNA molecule, it can corrupt it, usually causing it to fail to be able to split properly. Your body normally fights this "bad" cell off and nothing bad happens...this occurs in your body all the time. Once in a while though, the rogue cell is not noticed by the immune system and begins reproducing. This is a tumor. If it contains characteristics that allow it to spread to other types of cells, it's malignant, i.e. cancer.

Incidentally, this is one of they ways they determine if something is carcinogenic....if it is capable of passing cell walls and can react with any of the atoms that make up a DNA molecule. (Not very strict parameters)

Nothing to see here, move along