Radioactivity is All Around Us

And we're all radioactive, but not to worry - it's perfectly normal, and our cells can repair themselves when needed

what water has in common with radioactivity, a primer on cosmic radiation and radioactive carbon, and nuclear power plants

Last week, I mentioned that our bodies, being electrical by design, need electrolytes. Did you know drinking too much water can kill you?

From The standard.co.uk 12 April 2012:

“Marathon victim died from drinking too MUCH water

David Rogers, 22, died after drinking too much water during the London Marathon. He collapsed at the end of the race and died yesterday in Charing Cross Hospital. Today it emerged the fitness instructor from Milton Keynes died from hyponatraemia, or water intoxication. This is when there is so much water in the body that it dilutes vital minerals such as sodium down to dangerous levels. It can lead to confusion, headaches and a fatal swelling of the brain.”

I had an experience one time when climbing Mt Hood with a friend. He had read a lot about the need to stay hydrated by drinking lots of water when exercising, and that you shouldn’t wait until you’re thirsty, because by that time, it’s too late. I noticed that during the first 4 hours or so of the climb, he was drinking an awful lot of water. By the time we got to the “Hogsback”, a saddle which is a good resting spot, he said he felt sick and didn’t think he could go any further. I got out my cook kit and cooked a meal that had some salt in it as we took a good rest. After eating and resting, he said he felt better, so I suggested we continue the climb, and we could always turn back if he felt sick again. We made it to the top. The salt brought his electrolytes back into balance.

Just because drinking too much water can be bad, we don’t stop drinking water.

Life is full of risks, and generally too much of anything can have very bad consequences. Even beneficial medicines, many derived from plants, can be fatal if you overdose. But we don’t stop taking medicines if we need them.

We have an expression – “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

our daily exposure to radioactivity

We are constantly bombarded with radioactivity. Most of it comes from cosmic radiation and radon.

Cosmic rays collide with atoms in the atmosphere, knocking neutrons loose, which then collide with nitrogen atoms (N14: 7 protons and 7 neutrons in nucleus), which can be absorbed by carbon (C12) to produce radioactive carbon (C14: 8 protons and 6 neutrons).

Radon gas picks up radioactivity from uranium in rocks and soil. Also, most of us have had some man-made radiation, like x-rays and other medical scan methods. These exposures have to be carefully limited in dosage or else they could kill us.

Carbon is one of the most interesting sources of our radioactivity.

Most carbon is C12 – with a nucleus of 8 protons and 4 neutrons. But about 1 trillionth of all carbon atoms are C14, with 8 protons and 6 neutrons, and C14 is radioactive. It’s unstable. As C14 breaks down, a radioactive decay process transforms it into a stable isotope of nitrogen (N14). We all have carbon in us, (carbohydrates, CO2), and a tiny percentage of it is radioactive. Our radioactivity is constantly “decaying”, but an equilibrium is reached when the amount of intake matches the rate of decay. That’s why carbon dating works.

When a plant or animal dies, it stops taking in carbon, but the carbon that was in the organism at death constantly breaks down, so the age can be figured out by the proportion of C14 to C12 that remains. Beyond the half-life of C14 (about 5700 years), it gets very hard to detect the tiny amount of radioactivity that remains.

nuclear radioactivity

If we get too large a dose of any kind of radioactivity, bad things happen. But small amounts are not harmful, because God designed our cells to be able repair damage to DNA and cell membranes.

One time I was climbing up to the 9000 foot level on Mt Hood, (The top is 11,240’) with cross-country skis. I had glued ‘climbing skins’ on the bottoms, so they wouldn’t slip backwards. It was a beautiful day in June, so I had shorts on. There was a breeze, and fog. I didn’t know how much ultraviolet light and cosmic radiation was penetrating the fog and also reflecting from the snow, because the breeze kept me cool. My legs were burnt so badly that for the next several days, I couldn’t walk. If I stood up, I couldn’t tolerate the pain and would almost pass out. So I got around the house by sitting on a skateboard, keeping my legs up. My wife, a nurse, called it ‘sunpoisoning’. Yes, even too much sunlight can potentially kill you.

Just like fire, nuclear radioactivity is not to be feared as long as it’s controlled. And like fire, which has to be controlled and is utilized in most steam generators and gas furnaces for producing electric power, the heat from nuclear radioactivity is also utilized for power generation.

nuclear power plants

Modern nuclear power plants have many controls, and the small amount of radioactive waste is also very carefully controlled and contained.

Even though our bodies can repair damage from low doses, the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) has been overly restrictive for the past 50 years or so with its LNT (Linear No Threshold) policy. That policy was saying any radiation exposure at all is unacceptable. That was an unrealistic, in fact, impossible standard that ignored the reality of what we’ve been talking about - the fact that it’s perfectly normal to have some exposure to many kinds of radioactivity in small amounts and our bodies can handle it.

The new administration is adjusting the policy so new nuclear power plants can be approved. We badly need the stable, long term, 24/7 round-the-clock supply of energy that is not weather dependent.