Oh my, that banana has around 1E+19 atoms of deadly radioactive potassium (10 billion billion deadly atoms).
What about substitute salt containing far more deadly radioactive potassium than allowed for fission products in most soil standards. You buy it in a grocery store, eat it as a health food, but if it were to contain Cs-137 at 1/20th the activity, it would be radioactive waste. Ironic when you consider Cs-137 has a 30 yr half-life a 662 keV gamma (85%) and a 514 keV beta-max (95%) when K-40 has a 1E+09 yr half-life, a 1462 keV gamma (11%) and a 1312 keV beta-max (89%).
Norm: As our spokesman for the radical movement, what is your opinion regarding spending several billion dollars to remediate retired facilities and contaminated land to ultra low standards?
Regulators: How can you justify such ultra-low standards when there are so many real problems in the world that could be fixed for a whole lot less money?
Brian Keele
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 07:08:09 -0700
From: "Michael Stabin" <
michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu>
Subject: Re: Deadly Waste
> >
> > Looks like all Nevada residents are now doomed.
>
Actually, all Americans are also doomed. Anyone who may get a medical
examination involving DEADLY radiation is doomed (collective dose in the US
about 130,000 person-Sv per year). Anyone who lives for any length of time
bathed in this sea of DEADLY background radiation is doomed. Anyone who eats
a banana chock full of DEADLY radioactivity (K-40, half-life 1.3 BILLION
years, gamma ray energy 1.5 MILLION electron volts) giving off DEADLY
radiatio!
n will be lucky to make it through to the weekend. Just entering a
grocery store, where large quantities of unshielded bananas are routinely
stored, is probably enough to do you in. We need a Chiquita Mountain
project, and soon.
Mike