this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
-33 points (18.9% liked)

Technology

58981 readers
4081 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Notice the continuous mention of bones.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] unlawfulbooger@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago (6 children)

But then they’re drinking irradiated water, no?

Unless it’s really easy to remove the radiation safely, this doesn’t seem like the right solution.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Irradiated water is fine.

You're thinking of radioactive water, which is water with radioactive stuff in it.

Subjecting regular water to regular amounts of radiation is fine, even if it's high-energy gamma rays. If there's enough radiation to make water itself radioactive then you have bigger problems than radioactive water.

Ah yes, that’s the difference. Thanks!

You wouldn't want to drink reactor coolant water (mostly because of the chemistry additives) but water in a tank that just stays between the people and the hot stuff would mostly just get warm.

Most of what you'd get at that kind of distance is neutrons, and they are more likely to bounce off the hydrogen than to do something like activate the oxygen into N16 which dies off pretty fast anyway.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

"remove" what exactly? water is not alive so it's okay to irradiate it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Dude...wut.

Can't tell if you're joking or not.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

i don't get what you fail to understand, water doesn't became radioactive or harmful in any other way after irradiation, and irradiation of food is routinely used for extending its shelf life

[–] CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I don't think it works that way. The water slows down the neutrons so that when and if they get to you they don't have enough energy to hurt you. The radiation doesn't contaminate the water any more than a microwave oven does.

[–] verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They used the ice for everything, including cooling and heating the ship as needed. They got the bad effects from the cosmic radiation pinging in from all other directions, not from using the water. The volume of ice was larger than that of the ship, I think it also absorbed physical damage from micrometeorites. Let's hope someone in the Big Green Machine reads the novel.

[–] verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

I mean, they put nuclear waste at the bottom of miles deep water wells, because it absorbs alpha, gamma and beta particles and it's cheap.

[–] Bezier@suppo.fi -1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)