What if you swam in a nuclear storage pool? | xkcd What If?

Comments

• tal@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  fuel facilities generally do a pretty good job of keeping the water clean, but it’s radioactive enough that it wouldn’t be legal to sell it as bottled water. Which is too bad – it’d be an amazing energy drink.

  orau.org/…/revigator-1924-1926.html

  The Revigator was intended to add radioactivity (radon) to drinking water. Water without redioactivity was “devoid of its life element.” Water without radioactivity was like air without oxygen.

  The glazed ceramic body of the jar has a porous lining that incorporated uranium ore. Water placed inside the jar would absorb the radon released by decay of the radium in the ore. Depending on the type of water, the resulting radon concentrations would range from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand picocuries per liter.

  Advertised as “an original radium ore patented water crock,” it sold in the hundreds of thousands between 1924 and 1930.

  A company brochure stated, “Results overcome doubts.” “The millions of tiny rays that are continuously given off by this ore penetrate the water and form this great HEALTH ELEMENT–RADIO-ACTIVITY. All the next day the family is provided with two gallons of real, healthful radioactive water… nature’s way to health.”

  Users were provided the following printed instructions on the side of the jar:

  • Fill jar every night.
  • Use hydrant or any good water.
  • Drink freely when thirsty and upon arising and retiring. Average six or more glasses daily. Scrub with a stiff brush and scald monthly.

  The tan version shown here is the most commonly encountered style of Revigator.

  source

  • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The poor study leader’s last name.

    source
• teft@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I hope he starts making What If?'s about things he hasn’t covered in his comic. This video was essentially the spent nuclear fuel pool comic in video form, including the joke at the end about being shot.

  source

  • jqubed@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Right now I think the videos have all been from past What If…? entries. He’s already done the research, so to me it makes sense to use it again. Maybe some people prefer videos/audio to reading. Similarly, if he ever does new ones for a video, I assume he would also turn those in to written entries as well for the website. For him most of the work would be the research, so he might as well get as much use out of it as he can. I can understand doing exclusive ones for the books, though. He’s getting paid for those, so it’s worth extra effort.

    source
  • athos77@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What I keep thinking is: he's already done the technical research, then condensed everything down to a (usually) easily understandable, thought provoking, (often) 4-panel artistic comic - basically all the really hard stuff.

    Remember all those fucking annoying YouTube channels, where the "creator" would just grab posts and comments from /bestof or /goodlongposts, or top-voted stuff from /aitah, etc, and then they'd just have a robotic voice read the content and they were getting all these views even though they weren't actually doing anything creative?

    I'd rather he get any YouTube money from his actual effort, than some sketchy YouTube "creator" - because you know the only reason there isn't a channel for it yet is that no one's thought of it yet.

    source