• Ertebolle@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The fact that you’re bringing up Japan (which is massively overblown - you’re at more radiation risk from a coal power plant) shows you’re not serious about this.

    • astraeus@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      I’m curious about the radiation risk from a coal power plant, are radioactive carbon isotopes generated in the coal firing process?

      • Ertebolle@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Here’s an article - coal naturally contains trace amounts of radioactive elements and burning a bunch of it concentrates them.

      • Dojan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Carbon contains radioactive isotopes and if you use a lot of it to generate electricity you end up with a lot of it in a single spot. It’s specifically carbon-14 you measure when using radiocarbon dating to estimate how old an item is.

      • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Some trace elements in coal are naturally radioactive. These radioactive elements include uranium (U), thorium (Th), and their numerous decay products, including radium (Ra) and radon (Rn). Although these elements are less chemically toxic than other coal constituents such as arsenic, selenium, or mercury, questions have been raised concerning possible risk from radiation. In order to accurately address these questions and to predict the mobility of radioactive elements during the coal fuel-cycle, it is important to determine the concentration, distribution, and form of radioactive elements in coal and fly ash.

        … approximately 2,000 coal samples from the Western United States … concentrations of uranium fall in the range from slightly below 1 to 4 parts per million (ppm). … Coals with more than 20 ppm uranium are rare in the United States. Thorium concentrations in coal fall within a similar 1–4 ppm range, … Coals with more than 20 ppm thorium are extremely rare.

        https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html

    • NiftyBeaks@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance. They probably really do care but have little formal education and also the algorithms have decided to send them to a particular bubble of the internet.