Environment & Energy

...radon in my basement. I used to monitor it when I first moved in; but stopped doing so about 20 years ago. A few times I was near, but still below, the "action limit." I live near the Pennsylvania border, near the Reading Prong, a large uranium deposit that is now being fracked, accounting for the radium in flowback water, which is actually more radioactive than the sea outside Fukushima.

When they're done fracking, maybe the uranium can be removed and recovered in an ISR (in situ recovery) approach. I've fantasized about doing this with a supercritical carbon dioxide solvent.

In any case, radon or not, I'm still alive, an old man now.

This exercise with the ore led me to do something I've always wanted to do, but never found the time to do; calculate the specific activity of ²³⁸U in secular equilibrium with its decay products, leaving out a few of the insignificant branch ratios.

As I calculate it, the activity of the uranium content, (not the ore, which has other constituents) comes to about 9.27 X 10⁶ Bq per gram, or 2.5 microcuries. It's nothing to write home about, particularly because it's alpha radiation, with a few gammas thrown in for fun.

The specific activity of a 70 kg human being from ⁴⁰K, with potassium being of course, an essential element, is less, about 4.24 X 10³ Bq, but it is high energy and internal (and essential) to flesh. I haven't eaten the ore, but people do it, whether they know it or not, to a very limited extent. Many phosphate rocks mined for fertilizer are low level uranium ores. In fact, there was thought, in the 1950's of mining these rocks for uranium, until richer ores were discovered. These rocks apparently come from New Mexico.