From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Oct 20 1999 - 01:29:04 MDT
On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Spike Jones wrote:
> I wrote:
>
> > However, very *long* term solid state preservation is probably impossible
> > due to the damage caused by the radioactive decay of the frozen atoms....
>
> I've often wondered about this. I propose we dig up coal, a form of carbon
> free of carbon 14, burn it, exhaust the result into a carefully controlled
> greenhouse, in which we grow food which is free of carbon 14. If one
> eats only food from this greenhouse, one should be able to reduce
> substantially the amount of carbon 14 in ones system. Right? spike
I believe you're approach would work. However I think that most
of our internal radiation exposure comes from K40, not C14.
Perhaps a little radioactive iodine (presumably courtesy of
our nuclear testing over they years). By far and away the
largest dose a subset of the population receives is from
Radon being slowly leaked into their homes in areas where
the rocks (presumably igneous) that have a high content
of radioactive elements from the Earth's core.
So while it is an interesting idea, I think we would have to sit down
with our caculators and figure out how much this really buys us.
I'll see if I can nudge Robert F. into putting some of this material
into Chapter 13 of NM.
Robert
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