Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh R
I'm not a nuclear engineer .................................
The radioacitve daughters like Thorium and radioactive (heavy) Iodine, Potassium and Carbon are easily picked up by the body; as was seen with the Japanese nuke accident when people in the USA were trying to buy Iodine supplements for fear of thyroid cancer. There is possibly a measurable statistical increase in cancer in the World from that (as RWebb correctly noted, gubmit security clouds those findings). .
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The half life of radioactive iodine (Iodine-131) is
8 days.
Thorium is a naturally occurring radioactive element that is abundant in the earth's crust, about 4 times more common than uranium.
In pure form it goes pyrophoric and burns up in air.
They use it to make tungsten filaments and electrodes last longer because of it's high melting point. I have some of it in my garage, in my TIG welding electrodes.
Funny how they don't tell us those kinds of details in the 10 second news sound bites designed to scare the crap out of the uninformed and ignorant.