Re: Legacy of Heavy Water?....THNX Southern Man
Posted by Southern Man on Jan 28, 2002 at 10:51
(66.119.33.170)Re: Legacy of Heavy Water?....THNX Southern Man (Mike Kremer)
"So it seems that there is no easy way for the ordinary person to get rid any 'heavy water' that might be mixed in our normal supply.
There is a very easy way. Just don't drink "new" water. Dig a deep well. A few hundred meters down should be good enough. Most of the earth's water is underground (not in the oceans) and has been there for thousands of years. With a half-life of 12 years all the tritium is gone. Now the radium that the water has picked up from the natural sources is another matter entirely.
Instead of worrying about a specific element, worry about the total level of safety. Tritium in the water supply is a trivial safety hazard. But if you are really worried about the water supply, stop drinking from contaminated mud puddles and dig a deep well down to where all the clean water is. Check it to make sure it isn't contaminated with a local concentration of something bad such as uranium producing radon or arsenic or... Then drink up.
But wait a minute. Isn't your local water supplier supposed to do that and provide a safe supply? How about taking the easy way out and letting them do the job they have specialized in and we'll worry about other things. Like how much radiation is there in those potatoes we grew in the back yard last summer that we were planning to have for lunch?