Truck carrying 6000 lbs of Uranium overturns in NC

www.foxnews.com ^ | 12/21/06 | Fox News

[cowtowney]

Truck carrying 6000 lbs of Uranium overturns in NC - No thread yet

[Graymatter]

"There's no threat to the public,"

[ElkGroveDan]

Are you guys for reel?

They're a bunch of dumbies.

[BlownChevelle]

Very series. Heh. I can't imagine this is that big of a deal.

My hobbies: Extreme Flashlights - Extreme Cars - Lemon Law/Auto Buybacks - Metal Detecting

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

[Truck carrying 6000 lbs of Uranium overturns...]

I hate it when that happens.

[CottShop]

they don't want the public running up asnd licking the pavement- it is in NC ya know! http://sacredscoop.com

[radioactivereb]

LOL Some good old boys from Holmes County Mississippi where I'm from would mix it with yellow paint and paint the highway centerline with it...like the old watch faces. I deal with more potent materials in my line of work-there should be no public safety hazard-but I guarantee a media reaction hazard!

[doug from upland]

Yeah, this happens in North Carolina instead of, say, Chappaqua.

[Radix]

"Why such protective measures if there is no harm?"

In Massachusetts after the Big Dig collapse, political hacks were still insisting that the "tunnels are safe" even as they began dismantling them for the shoddy workmanship.

You can't trust any of them.

[CougarGA7]

Most likely the Uranium is in a Trupack. They have tested these thing by crashing a freight train into them and they did not breach. This is probably more of a neussance than a problem.

[CougarGA7]

Wow, I cant spell today.

[GSlob]

Probably natural or slightly enriched. Given the strong packaging, slight enrichment is likely. Weapons grade is transported differently [there was an article on it, some years ago] - unmarked cars, heavily armed escort].

[GSlob]

"Isn't Uranium Hexafluoride a gas at STP?" - Low boiling liquid. And they were transporting a powder - oxide, probably.

[Just another Joe]

Free ocean water, free uranium,.... free everything.

Free love? Naw, it's been tried. Doesn't work.

;^)

[Domandred]

Yeah but most people don't know this. They hear "Uranium" and think Chernobyl or nuclear bomb

And don't bother checking their old dishes to see if they have any Fiesta-ware :)

[UpAllNight]

--Interesting that a gazillion rules are in place to ship all kinds of radioactive materials, but we won't take two seconds to secure our borders, enforce our immigration laws and possibly find out who ultimately may be driving these vehicles....there is a real disconnect here.--

You are obviously not aware of the high sensitivity equipment we have at the borders and monitoring our highway systems for radioactive materials.

[GSlob]

U-235 is not that highly radioactive - half life is what, 700 million years?

[GSlob]

Well, you get what you pay for.

[verum ago]

I think this is the unrefined natural metal. Not the refined highly radioactive 235. It is made up mostly of 238 which is not radioactive and called depleted uranium, it has less than 1% 235 which is highly radioactive.

all isotopes of uranium are radioactive, U-238 included. However, even the U-235 used in weapons is not very radioactive at all- its ability to be used in weapons stems from its ability to sustain a forced fissile reaction, not its weak background alpha emissions. U-234, -235, and -238 all decay by emitting alpha particles, which are unable to penetrate the skin. Thus the radiological danger from them is only from them being ingested or inhaled, or from uranium that is undergoing fission (like that in a reactor, not a transport truck), in which case the danger is actually from the decay of its fissile daughters. Uranium is actually much more of a threat to people chemically, as while it in itself and its cations aren't known to be dangerous, the anions it's joined with (usually fluoride) can be quite toxic. Weapons and reactor grade plutonium (Pu-239) is a much different story- it is on the order of 29000 times more radioactive than U-235 and presents a real threat- once again, not by its own decay, but by that of its daughter nuclei. A general way of gauging how radioactive something is is by looking at its half life. The rate of decay ('how radioactive') is inversely proportional to the half life. U-238's is about 4.46 billion years, while U-235's is about 700 million years. Some dangerous radioisotopes are Plutonium 239- 24100 years, radium 226- 1600 years, and radon 222- 3.8 days. Using this method you can see U-235 is still several orders of magnitude less active than most dangerous substances. Do note, however, that an important factor to include is what type of decay a radioisotope undergoes- alpha is the least dangerous, beta is in between, and gamma radiation is the most dangerous. The dominant form of decay in uranium is alpha, while most substances that are considered dangerous for external exposure are primarily beta and gamma emitters.

[F.J. Mitchell]

Not a bad idea. It seems that would be cheaper than those reflectors that are used on the center lines of many roads, now. Those things sure do make night driving over winding rural roads a lot easier and safer.

[F.J. Mitchell]

LOL! We all have those days, that's the purpose of spell check.

Trouble with spell check is that on some words, spell check doesn't have a clue either.