http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster If I ever get my hands on a time machine, I would love to see this from a safe vantage point. If your home town or country has had interesting disasters, post them here!
The now defunct Uranium Refinement company Eldorado dumped radioactive waste all around my town, back when no one knew about the radioactive qualities of uranium and it's products. Actually I think at first they did Radium before Uranium, since there are people in this town who've been found with tubes containing Radium in their homes (they stole them cause it was like gold). Now there's a 10-year long process of digging up this radioactive waste and putting it in safety standards containers underground (which require that the container last at least one half life of Uranium, AFAIK).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots Nothing more stratifying than watching a bunch of queers beating the shit out of the police force.
"The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years" Dude I don't think we really need to worry too much about the containers lasting that long, humanity will be long gone by then.
My hometown just reached a population of 5000 in 2008 or so... no real disasters. However, in 1980 we had an ax murder that occurred between two women over some guy (one was having an affair). There was a book written about it, and a made-for-tv movie. Very popular story among the neighboring small towns, and as a kid I went to the same church as the people involved in the ax murder did when they were still around. Actually recognized a few names in the book when I skimmed it. The church really hates that ax murder, because whenever they are promoting some local event somebody will recognize the name and say 'Hey, you're the ax murder church!'.
But thats a pretty stable isotope of U. In pure form, it probably wouldnt do shit. Whats bad is all the impurities and other isotopes.
Really? I thought it was something like 10,000. There's some number that's 10,000, and that's what the containers have to last. The oldest structure currently standing are the pyramids and they have less than 5k years.
Exactly, there are multiple isotopes with widely diffrent half lifes. Some last minutes, some last millions of years. It also seems to be a common misconception to think that longer half life = worse. It doesnt work like that folks.
Well it's most likely not even isotopes of Uranium since it's the waste from a power plant, not the fuel itself. So like radon or something idk.
