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A comment on Uranium Contaminates Water Across California's Central Valley (2015). Parent comment

Re:Uranium Contaminates Water Across California's Central Va... by whateveryou381 on Sunday August 25, 2019 @08:47PM (#20796690)
Is he alive or dead? Cause of death? There are of course the radiothor incidents (where people actually died from eating uranium and thorium products, note this is selectively consumed for many years at concentrated levels, much higher than in rocks)[1]. Also the Baltimore Radium girls, who ingested concentrated radium to make glow in the dark watches.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor

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Re:Uranium Contaminates Water Across California's Central Va... by beefman on Sunday August 25, 2019 @09:03PM (#20796763)
He died in 2008 at age 82, from Parkinson's disease.
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Re:Uranium Contaminates Water Across California's Central Va... by khuey on Sunday August 25, 2019 @09:05PM (#20796768)
Radium is ~500000x as radioactive as uranium.
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Re:Uranium Contaminates Water Across California's Central Va... by whateveryou381 on Sunday August 25, 2019 @09:21PM (#20796817)
Half-life is longer for uranium, but I would say they are just as radioactive, as they are in secular equilibrium and apart of the same decay chain [1]. They are just as "radioactive" in this configuration, as they go through the same number of decays. Their concentrations can change.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain#/media/File:Decay_...

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Re:Uranium Contaminates Water Across California's Central Va... by erik_seaberg on Sunday August 25, 2019 @10:20PM (#20796998)
SI measures radiation in decay events per second. The rate is important because we mostly worry about decay product exposure during our lifetimes, or maybe how long a mass must be contained until it stops being an acute risk to our species, rather than the grand total of decay over astronomical time scales.
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