Radiation Absorbing Mineral Found In the Arctic

An anonymous reader writes "A mineral has recently been found that exhibits the astounding property of being able to remove radiation from water-based solutions. 'After coming into contact with the mineral, radioactive water becomes completely safe. Had this mineral been available to physicists after the Chernobyl or Three Mile Island disasters, the consequences might have been very different, as both accidents resulted in contamination from radioactive water.' Also, the article notes that although only grams of the material have been found, tons of it are needed; they are confident they could artificially reproduce it."

correct me if I'm wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Had this mineral been available to physicists after the Chernobyl or Three Mile Island disasters, the consequences might have been very different,

I thought radiation levels around 3 Mile Island never got more than twice background? Aernt there are plenty of normal places around the word (i.e. not uranium mines/dumps) where the levels are naturally higher?

Re:correct me if I'm wrong

[JohnnyGTO]

Yes but showing the DANGER of nuclear energy through sensational media coverage is mandatory!

Re:correct me if I'm wrong

[davester666]

Quick, start mining the arctic for this material. And if you happen to come across oil, it's a bonus!

Re:

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I thought radiation levels around 3 Mile Island never got more than twice background? Aernt there are plenty of normal places around the word (i.e. not uranium mines/dumps) where the levels are naturally higher?

There are plenty of places where water is naturally full of alligators, it doesn't mean it's okay or desirable to introduce crocs in places where there aren't any.

Re:correct me if I'm wrong

[BlueParrot]

There are plenty of places where water is naturally full of alligators, it doesn't mean it's okay or desirable to introduce crocs in places where there aren't any.

Is that another bad analogy I see? Oh yes... Ok, lets put it into perspective then. Based on the radiation dose people were exposed to from three mile island it was estimated that you could expect 0.5 cases of cancer as a result. I.e, there was a 50% chance that one person might develop cancer due to the radiation at some part during his/her life. Now, start comparing it to risks we accept every day. The risk of getting cancer from the Sun's UV rays. The risk of getting killed when you cross the road. The risk from fossil fuel emissions. The risk of drowning in a hydroelectric dam. The risk you will choke on a peanut... etc. Basically, if you don't think the risk from accidents like TMI is acceptable, you'd better not eat any solid food tonight, because there is a chance you will choke on it. Oh, and I wouldn't ever take a shower if I were you, you might slip and hit your head against the tub.

Re:correct me if I'm wrong

[p0tat03]

Oh, and I wouldn't ever take a shower if I were you,

I'm on Slashdot, that advice is irrelevant.

You insensitive clod!

[Poingggg]

...I wouldn't ever take a shower if I were you, you might slip and hit your head against the tub...

I just died that way!

Re:You insensitive clod!

[TheRaven64]

I just died that way!

You know you're a geek when the first thing you do after dying is post on Slashdot to tell everyone about it.

Re:

[tsa]

No, you had to hit the sink, after falling off the toilet.

Re:correct me if the story changed

[epine]

The actual radiation release from TMI was not earth shattering, regardless of Spin at Eleven. However, they released a report following the accident which claimed the accident had a relatively modest risk profile. This "nothing to see here" Kemeny report was published well before the Idaho National Lab finished dismantling the reactor core. What they found at the bottom was shocking. Let's just say the radioactive blob was well on its way to China.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/tmi/tmi03.htm [si.edu]

7:45 a.m. By now there are at least 20, perhaps as many as 60, operators, supervisors, and other persons in the control room. Although none is yet ready to believe that the core had been uncovered, radiation levels in the power plant buildings are so high that Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations require the declaration of a general emergency. While state and federal officials are being informed of elevated radiation levels, unbeknown to all, a molten mass of metal and fuel--some twenty tons in all--is spilling into the bottom of the reactor vessel. The bottom of the reactor vessel is steel, five inches (13 cm) thick. But even that thickness of steel would not be expected to hold up for more than a few hours against such heat.

Note that the information presented here comes *after* they discovered the true magnitude of the molten blob years later. It took INEEL a good while to chisel out twenty tons of highly radioactive material with a remote-controlled jackhammer.

From the rather tame Kemeny report [pddoc.com]

e. There is no indication that any core material made contact with the steel pressure vessel at a temperature above the melting point of steel (2,800F).

Well, they later discovered that twenty tons of material well above that temperature was puddling in that vicinity at an alarming rate: perhaps no longer than episode in the series 24.

The story of TMI is not what was actually released, but how clueless they all were for a long time afterward about how close it came to dumping a Chernobyl-unit of molten goo into the Pennsylvania water table.

Concerning Chernobyl [wikipedia.org]:

All remaining dosimeters had limits of 0.001 R/s and therefore read "off scale". Thus, the reactor crew could ascertain only that the radiation levels were somewhere above 0.001 R/s (3.6 R/h), while the true levels were 5,600 times higher in some areas.

Because of the fallacious low readings, the reactor crew chief Alexander Akimov assumed that the reactor was intact. The evidence of pieces of graphite and reactor fuel lying around the building was ignored, and the readings of another dosimeter brought in by 4:30 a.m. were dismissed under the assumption that the new dosimeter must have been defective. Akimov stayed with his crew in the reactor building until morning, trying to pump water into the reactor. None of them wore any protective gear. Most of them, including Akimov, died from radiation exposure within three weeks.

I suspect he took one look at that reading and thought to himself, "if that reading is correct, my goose is cooked". The Soviet Union never established much of a track record in encouraging the self-preservation of men poured into the breech. Typically, your reward for survival was being shot.

Back in America, the debate centers around 0.5 cancers in the aftermath, rather than the one or two hour window between what actually happened and the China syndrome. I wonder if they made an explicit political calculation: let's rush through publication of the Kemeny report before we learn anything more frightening we'd be obligated to disclose. Under the Bush administration, those obligations have mostly been terminated. They could probably write the accident report today for a future accident that hasn't even happened yet.

Re:correct me if the story changed

[Mspangler]

Actually I saw the report and the pictures of TMI while an undergrad at the U of Idaho. The bottom of the reactor was full of scrap iron (Ok fancy scrap alloys if you want to be picky.) The melted fuel was not at the bottom: It was higher in the reactor vessel.

The point everyone forgot is that heat rises. And the second point is that unlike water and ice, molten metal is less dense than the unmelted metal. Once the water boiled out, the fission stopped, and the decay heat wasn't enough to chew through all the non-fuel containing structure, which was sagging to the bottom of the fuel zone. So remains of the reactor stayed in the vessel.

Now, in Chernobyl, the graphite did not boil off, the reactor kept going well after it started to come apart, and, well, the heat still went up, carrying the reactor with it. That "Elephant's foot" was a portion of the melt that did go down, but in the end it stopped while still inside the building.

SL-1 went prompt-critical, blew it's control rods UP into the roof, and did not melt down either. Windscale also went up, not down.

Meltdowns probably do need to be designed against, but they look much less likely to occur than originally thought.

Re:

[Smurf]

I hope you are aware of two things:

• As a semi-anonymous Slashdot user you have almost as much credibility as anyone else. You can claim that YOU designed TMI, but unless you provide a link or a citation to a reputable source you might as well say that the FSM told you.
  
• ...
  

And at this point I get the joke, feel like a retard, but nevertheless hit the Submit button. Cheers!

Re:You're not wrong, you're an idiot!

[ZombieWomble]

The problem is there isn't really good evidence that such radiation is dangerous at all. These figures like the "0.5 cases of cancer" all assume the Linear No Threshold model - that is, that any amount of radiation is bad, and extrapolate a straight line from the last "good" data to (0,0). This has never been conclusively proven, given the extremely low cancer rates that would be expected at such low exposure limits. And the naive "it can cause DNA damage, it must be bad!" line of reasoning also doesn't hold, because there is evidence that radioresistance can develop, at least on the level of individual cells.

There are places on earth where background is one hundred times the global average, and people aren't dropping like flies there. A tiny rise in background is a fairly minor issue - significantly smaller than pretty much any accident which could happen in any other business - but because it's from "radiation", it's endlessly repeated as proof of how dangerous these power plants are.

Re:

[gumbi west]

If anyone cares, the above poster disagrees with the National Academies of Science [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[ZombieWomble]

The official position is that the LNT model is the "most reasonable", given current what good epidemiological studies are available - but the article cited by wikipedia goes to some length to point out the lack of good evidence there is for very low levels of dose. It notes that the correlation is only reasonable down to ~50mSv, which is still 25 times the mean background, for example.

Consider the graph they show for the different low-dose models:

http://www.pnas.org/content/vol100/issue24/images / large/pq [pnas.org]

Re:

[Jarjarthejedi]

Wow...that makes perfect sense. Cause there can't be any types [wikipedia.org] of [wikipedia.org] radiation [wikipedia.org] that [wikipedia.org] won't [wikipedia.org] kill [wikipedia.org] you [wikipedia.org] instantly [wikipedia.org]. That would be absurd!

I sincerely hope you were kidding...

Re:You're not wrong, you're an idiot!

[gumbi west]

Oh get off trying to misunderstand him. The point is that if you can see ionizing radiation, your probably in for it. The exception would be Cherenkov radiation--which might not kill you if the setup is right.

Re:You're not wrong, you're an idiot!

[Synchis]

"(Score:0, Insightful)"...

Only on Slashdot...

Re:

[timster]

The best part about this comment is the fact that the STP nuclear plant in south Texas is well-known for its gator-infested cooling pool.

Re:

[no_pets]

The best part about this comment is the fact that the STP nuclear plant in south Texas is well-known for its gator-infested cooling pool.

It's imperative that more of this mineral be found to prevent these gators from mutating.

Re:

[2names]

I for one welcome our new radioactive, reptilian overlords.

*ducks*

Wait a second there, buster!

[A nonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new radioactive, reptilian overlords.

Good so far.

*ducks*

But that's pushing it. Ducks are birds, and birds are the last remnant dinosaurs, and dinosaurs and reptiles are related, but that doesn't mean ducks are reptiles.

Re:

[Goaway]

And there are places where the trees are full of squirrels, and that doesn't mean that introducing squirrels somewhere else is going to mean you'll get nibbled to death by them.

What a goddamn useless argument.

Re:

[DaleGlass]

And there are places where the trees are full of squirrels, and that doesn't mean that introducing squirrels somewhere else is going to mean you'll get nibbled to death by them.

Unless they're russian squirrels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4489792.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Re:

[eln]

Aernt there are plenty of normal places around the word (i.e. not uranium mines/dumps) where the levels are naturally higher?

There are, but they're mostly uninhabitable due to being overrun by giant dinosaurs [wikipedia.org].

Re:correct me if I'm wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

This would have changed the situation at TMI significantly. Instead of 0 deaths due to radiation, you would have only a thousandth the deaths, maybe even only a millionth. Let me grab my calculator...resulting in 0 deaths.

Northern Iran

[arthurpaliden]

I believe that northern Iran (no joke intended) has the highest background radiation found any where in the world. It is many times the US acceptible limit. People have lived there just fine for thousands of years. Preemptive Reply: That is untill their nuclear labs are taken out, then it will change location.

Re:

[LWATCDR]

"Aernt there are plenty of normal places around the word (i.e. not uranium mines/dumps) where the levels are naturally higher?"
Background is an average. So the answer is yes. Including many basements, cities located high in the moutians, airliners... You don't even need to be near a uranium mine or dump to get twice background.

Filtered water

[Gogogoch]

Well, this sounds like a mineral based water filter. It removes the radioactive isotopes from water, not the radiation itself. So anything that can remove these typically heavy ions will work. I'm surprised this is new.

Exactly

[HangingChad]

It removes the radioactive isotopes from water, not the radiation itself.

Yeah, and what kind of radioactive material? Strontium and Cesium? Beta emitters? How about I-131? Or is it just heavy nucleotides? What about radioisotopes that happen to be toxic besides being radioactive?

I'll be happy to run the dosimetry for anyone who wants to experiment but you won't catch me drinking any radiation snake oil the Russians cook up...that doesn't start with a vat of potato peelings anyway.

Re:

[Cafe Alpha]

Well, yes. But this is the new slashdot. It never lets science get in the way of a good marketing line.

Go ahead, mark me down, I don't mind losing my karma. Slashdot isn't worth much these day.

Re:Filtered water

[darkmeridian]

Well, no. It sounds like another Russian ploy to convince the world that it owns the Arctic Circle. Ten new minerals a year are found there! Go Russia!

Everyone knows that the Arctic is useful only for its oil fields, but that doesn't mean you can't pretend to be interested in the Arctic for other reasons--like world-saving minerals only your scientists can find.

I'm a cynic.

Re:

[TigerNut]

Heavy water, at least the deuterium-based kind, isn't radioactive.

There is another, heavier, water.

[SatanicPuppy]

D2O, isn't radioactive, but HTO (Tritium Oxide) is a beta emitter. Tritium is H-3 (Deuterium is H-2); hydrogen with 2 extra neutrons. Half life of about 12 years. It's used to boost the yield on nukes, so it does get made a bit.

Oxygen has 2 isotopes, but I don't think either of them are radioactive, or otherwise very interesting.

Re:

[rubycodez]

oxygen has 3 stable isotopes, 16, 17 & 18. There's 14 unstable ones 12-15 and 19-27, but their half-life goes from 2 hours down to very minute fractions of a second, they won't hang around long.

Fooled again.

[Futurepower(R)]

Once again a Slashdot editor is fooled by pseudo-science.

Re:

[aapold]

I didn't know snakes lived up in the arctic.... I know they had oil, but not snakes...

Learn every day; life is too complicated for games

[Futurepower(R)]

"They've found a new mineral which absorbs radiation... It can absorb radioactivity from liquid nuclear waste."

The article linked in the Slashdot story does not say that radioactive minerals are being absorbed, a chemical impossibility. It says radiation is absorbed, which is impossible in physics, in the way that that the article states.

I know that this will probably be moderated down by those who use games to avoid dealing with reality. However, it seems useful to say that life is too complicated to play games; it is necessary to learn everything you can every day.

Slashdot editors have, according to them, spent a lot of time playing games, and they are often fooled by junk pretending to be science. I'm guessing that there is a connection between their game playing and their ignorance of the real world.

Re:Learn every day; life is too complicated for ga

[LWATCDR]

Yep. Thanks for point that out. Pure water is VERY HARD to make radioactive. You would need to bombard it with enough neutrons to breed a large amount of tritium. If you did that you sure wouldn't want to get ride of that water since it would be worth a lot of money.

Water can become contaminated with readioive material. There are lots of ways to filter out the contamination but they tend to be expensive because it isn;t just a few gallons of water water you have to deal with but a lake, aquifer, or river.

No way to selectively absorb radioactive minerals.

[Futurepower(R)]

There is no filter that selectively absorbs radioactive minerals, because radioactivity is a nuclear phenomenon, and filters are chemically active.

Space Travel

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW!! Could they use this mineral on spacecraft to absorb radiation in space to make it safe for long-distance space travelers??? That is just what we need!

Re:Space Travel

[dstiggy]

Exactly it's Trellium D! Man why didn't I think of that before... Now wait was that radiation or did it absorb spacial anomalies? Damn Star Trek!

Re:

[daniel23]

The article says it absorbs radiation from water based solutions. So I assume in a wet universe this should work...

Bullshit

[MarsDefenseMinister]

My bullshit detector is going off. Yours should be too.

Re:Bullshit

[lahi]

Indeed. It's way out on the taurokoprometric scale. If only they could find a bullshit-absorbing mineral.

-Lasse

Re:Bullshit

[JonTurner]

>>If only they could find a bullshit-absorbing mineral.

Slashdotium 404. A rare, low-energy isotope of unobtanium. A naturally occurring byproduct of cheetos, Jolt and bad upbringing, frequently found in mother's basements and video arcades it is of no known use.

Re:Bullshit

[cmdr_beeftaco]

I think Slashdotium 404 is an isotope of Virginium.

Re:

[hobo sapiens]

No, that's just my dosimeter. You see, my job is to be a radiation absorber. I for one, DO NOT welcome our new radiation-absorbing mineral-based overlords.

Re:

[seebs]

Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence, to wit, the idea of a slashdot editor who has a bullshit detector.

Re:Bullshit

[Jaseoldboss]

How wrong you are, the new mineral called Kraptonite absorbs gamma rays ten million times more effectively than the same thickness of Lead.

Had this mineral been available to physicists after the Chernobyl or Three Mile Island disasters, the consequences might have been very different, as both accidents resulted in contamination from radioactive water.

Ah yes, a sprinkling of radiation absorbing mineral would have completeley prevented a 30GW steam explosion wouldn't it?
By they way, I'm not cynical of the Russian scientists as there is every possibility of them having discovered a new filtration compound. Rather the idiotic reporting of it as some new 'radiation antidote'.

Re:

[budgenator]

No Really, in fact in the "World News Weekly" they report that bigfoot has been found hiding in the ice cream cooler in a Florida Super-market, Space aliens sold mind control beams to the first President Bush to give to the CIA, and Elvis is living in a Nursing-home in South Dakota.

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Yeah, it just doesn't make sense.

Re:Bullshit

[arivanov]

Probably. Actually it may be either bad science or bad journalism.

AFAIK the annoyance no 1 contaminant in nuclear waste is radiactive Rutenium. Whatever you do it always ends up in both your "pure" fraction and your "waste" in significant quantities and has a spectrum of isotopes which while not very long lived, have a halftime long enough just to be a major annoyance. So if someone in the arctic has discovered something that absorbs it in quantity and tried to explain his discovery to a Russian journalist over one of those standard "beyond the arctic circle" cocktails known as "Vupej, poliarnikom budesh" the resulting article on the morning after would have been something like this.

So it may be not the bullshit detector going off the scale. It may be the alcohol one when applied to an illiterate journalist.

BS: maybe not: Zeolytes

[redelm]

As written this is almost certainly bunk: Alpha, beta, gamma rays and high energy photons aren't easy to absorb. However, there does exist a class of minerals that absorb ions: clays and zeolytes. But no known material discriminates between isotopes to any easily significant extent. Isotope separation is well-known to be very difficult.

It may be that a new mineral has been found with strong absorbtive powers for heavy cations. Zeolytes are used currently in the application.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I followed the article. Seems to contain no substantial information whatever. Who writes this shit?
Anyone know more about this story (assuming there is more to know)?

Eco-friendly nukes

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

I can see it now... the President holds a conference praising the development of eco-friendly nukes that wipe out entire populations of men, women, and children, but that leave the surviving ecosystem safe from continued exposure. Red is the new Green!

Is the ATLANTUS OUTPOST near buy

[Joe The Dragon]

and are there any ZPM's left?

Re:

[JohnnyGTO]

Isn't it a bad thing to mix naquida and radioactive elements?

Re:

[click2005]

Naquida was radioactive in the movie.

In Russia...

[krgallagher]

As I read the article, I could not help but hear a Russian accent in my head. Especially on sentences like "Every year ten new minerals are discovered in the Arctic Circle, and one third of all worldwide mineral discoveries are on the Kolsky Peninsula." It has a distinctly cold war era sound to it. So...

In Russia radiation absorbs minerals from you!

Three Mile Island disaster?

[Matt Edd]

Not to say that it wasn't a bad thing but calling it a disaster seems like FUD to me. From wikipedia...

The scientific community is largely agreed on the effects of the Three Mile Island accident. The consensus is that no member of the public was injured by the accident. "The average radiation dose to people living within ten miles of the plant was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by US residents in a year.

Re:

[iabervon]

The NRC was justifiably worried that it was pure luck that nothing really bad happened. It's not right to call it a disaster, but neither would it be reasonable to write it off entirely. If the same thing were to happen often, there would be an actual disaster before long, and the NRC is supposed to prevent disasters, not just identify them after the fact.

27-4 sounds like

[click2005]

a russian convenience store.

Re:

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Did you mean CEBEN NLEBEN?

What is the "Kolsky Research Institute"?

[johndiii]

Google returns only three hits for "Kolsky Research Institute" - all connected with this story.

As nice as it would be to believe that this is true, it sounds like pseudoscience to me. Absorbing any radioactive substance from water just does not sound plausible, given that absorption would be a micro-level physical process, or a chemical one, acting on a nuclear-level phenomenon.

Re:

[njchick]

Perhaps the name of the research organization can be translated in more than one way. Try looking for the researcher's name. Yakov Pakhomovsky [google.com] appears to be working in the Geological Institute of the Kola Science Center [apatity.ru].

Re:

[TheRealMindChild]

While I am leaning toward agreeing with you, I have to put a stick in your wheel spokes. I was watching something on the discovery channel about a team of researchers called "The North American Ape Alliance". Their mission is to study and prove/disprove that there are wild apes in North America. But if you search google for "North American Ape Alliance", you get just two links, which simply list a certain doctors name (Richard Wrangham) as belonging to this group... but no site for this group. No papers, no

Re:What is the "Kolsky Research Institute"?

[budgenator]

Its called a zeolites [wikipedia.org] and they have been used in water softeners and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants for decade.

so. . .

[jppatton1]

In Soviet Russia. . .um. . . crap. I got nothing. Sorry. I'm new here.

Light on details

[Dan East]

The article is very light on details. To remove "radiactivity" from water, you really need to remove radiactive substances from the water. So this mineral is what, like a filter that removes any and all molecular impurities from water, leaving only H2O molecules?

Dan East

Bollocks

[Aardpig]

You cannot 'remove' radiation from water; the reason water might be radioactive is that it contains contaminants that themselves are radioactive. But ordinary water - containing just 1H and 16O - is completely stable.

This highlights a common misconception about radioactive contamination. Things that are initially inert only become radioactive either by contamination or by transmutation; they are not 'infected' by radioactivity.

Re:

[grasshoppa]

1H and 16O?

Wouldn't that be really really reactive?

Re:

[Aardpig]

I meant, hydrogen with 1 nucleon (1 proton) and oxygen with 16 nucleons (8 protons, 8 neutrons).

Re:

[sherpajohn]

But ordinary water - containing just 1H and 16O - is completely stable.

Um, what's H16O? I thought water was H20 - you know, dihydrogen monoxide...oh wait that stuff is dangerous!

Re:

[Aardpig]

Since when did being a nerd imply scientific illiteracy -- such as an inability to distinguish between a molecular configuration (which relates to chemical properties) and a nuclear configuration (which relates to radioactivity)?

Re:

[Aardpig]

Fair remark, but not really relevant; nobody wants to remove this sort of radioactivity, since it is so low-level

Re:

[Aardpig]

Yes, it is. Read what I wrote; hydrogen with a mass number 1, oxygen with a mass number 16. The quantities in which these quantities combine to form a water molecule (H2O) has nothing to do with the radioactivity or otherwise.

Re:

[Akaihiryuu]

I know this is probably a joke reply, but the poster was referring to the atomic weights of the elemnts. For example, U-238, H-1, O-16, etc.

Where does it go?

[jshriverWVU]

Sounds promising that this can absorb radiation, but where does it end up? Say we *are* able to mine or synthesize tons of this stuff and clean up radioactive sites. Then we're still stuck with this material. Can this material once radioactive be refined for use in reactors for electricty?

Lots of questions still need to be asked.

Re:

[hobo sapiens]

Nah, you see...there's another mineral out there too. It is capable of absorbing radiation from this material. See? Problem solved! Silly boy!

Re:

[andrewd18]

Nah, you see...there's another mineral out there too. It is capable of absorbing radiation from this material. See? Problem solved! Silly boy!

I believe they call it VOOM.

Stand back nonbelievers...

[RobertB-DC]

... or the rain will never come. Someone get that fire a'burnin, somebody beat the drum...

How can anyone take this article seriously? Leaving aside the whole issue of non-existent Three Mile Island "water contamination", the whole thing smacks of Cold War "Oh, that was invented by Russian, but it was bigger and better!" propaganda. I feel like I'm watching an old episode of Star Trek, with Checkov saying "Scotch? It was invented by little old lady from Leningrad [memory-alpha.org]"

Re:

[budgenator]

No Way, everybody knows scotch was invented by Klingons!

Finally!

[ArcherB]

OK, NOW they can build that nuclear plant in my back yard!

science???

[Anonymous Coward]

I need more detail to believe this. Radioactivity (in radioactive materials) is caused by the decay of unstable atoms into smaller ones, with a release of energy and high speed particles (aka radiation). Radiation isn't a chemical that you can just remove. Lots of things can absorb radiation, but the radioactive material just produces more. To quickly remove the radioactivity you would have to (1) remove the unstable isotopes, or (2) break them down into more stable forms, or (3) change something so that they do not break down using science fiction techniques. Since 3 is probably impossible for humans today, and 2 would cause a sudden large release of energy, the most probable way to do it is (1).

Unless they are talking about a chemical that precipitates the specific elements or isotopes that are responsible for the radioactivity (in which case why is this a new discovery?), I would suspect a hoax, or at least a gross mischaracterization of the discovery.

More nonsense out of Russia?

[MSTCrow5429]

Beyond the uber-poster being completely clueless about Chernobyl and the rather minor and harmless incident at Three Mile Island (unless you count bad PR), a mineral that can somehow absorb radiation sounds hard to believe. How much radiation is the mineral alleged to absorb per unit of mass? What are you supposed to do with a now very high radioactively concentrated mineral? This sounds like more nationalistic chest pounding out of an increasingly hostile bear, from one of the sillier Russian tabloids.

I know the mineral - it's LEAD!

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I know the mineral - it's LEAD! Yes, just grind it up into a fine powder and sprinkle it into your radioactive brew: even the glowing-est cup of water will be safe to drink again.

Wow!

[east coast]

I guess this beats the old saw dust or kitty litter tricks.

Please use common definitions

[Brett Buck]

Usually, calling something a "disaster" implies that someone or something was negatively effected. The Three Mile Island "disaster" resulted in no impact to anyone or anything aside from causing electricity bills to rise.

      Brett

Indirect disaster

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The undamaged plant next to it was shut down as a precaution. The power the two plants generated was replaced by burning coal. Using the Office of Technology Assessment figures for premature deaths from coal burning, the accident itself killed 50 people every year from air pollution and coal mining, another 50 per year from the shutdown of the other reactor.

Coal has gotten cleaner over time, so you can't just multiply by the number of years since the accident, but it's still many hundreds of people dead.

Re:

[Brett Buck]

Right, but that's a self-created disaster/criminal stupidity that had virtually nothing to do with the reality of the original incident.

      Brett

Serious business down in the lab...

[weirdcrashingnoises]

Jim: Hey Earl, we got that new mineral, what are we ganna do with it?

Earl: How bout we put some in that cup of radioactive water?

Jim: Wow, how about that! It's not radioactive anymore! *starts to hand earl the water*

Earl: Ha ha, nice try Jim, I've fallen for that one before!

Too good to be true?

[Z00L00K]

If it sounds too good to be true - it probably is.

Of course - there is always the possibility that radioactive isotopes can be filtered out from water, but each isotope has a different chemical signature so it's not easy to find a wonder-material that catches all. And that without contaminating the water with other chemicals that may be poisonous instead.

For radiation shielding [wikipedia.org] Lead and Barium sulfate are two common materials. Depleted uranium isn't that bad when it comes to shielding, but it's harder to get. Then there is also the question of if it's Alpha, Beta or Gamma radiation. Each is shielded in a different way, but the absorption shield may generate secondary radiation when absorbing the primary radiation.

Neutrons are a special case since they have a tendency to penetrate most materials relatively easy and magnetic fields can't be used to deflect them either...

Cosmic radiation is actually a mix of various types of radiation, Helium nuclei, protons, electrons etc., all with high energy so the counter-measures have to cope with a mix of radiation.

And the mineral is.... carbon!

[Ancient_Hacker]

Since the article is a bit short on detauils, we can reverse-engineer to get the info... Let's see ... absorbs things.... Aha ! Charcoal! Activated carbon!! But darn, you might recall since WWI the technology has been around to char things like peach pits until they're pure carbon, for use in gas masks. Only about 90 years too late to patent this.

Russian Holy Water

[Doc Ruby]

Ah, but the Russian holy water [google.com] I bought over the intarwebs is stronger than this hellish mineral! The damn yankees might have used these devil powers to win the cold war and trigger the Chernobyl disaster, but my holy water has cleansed me through my soul. And now I will wash clean this mineral from my Web pages, before they can bewitch me.

Just look: My holy water has already brought their mineral webserver to its knees!

What will Simpsons do now?

[eebra82]

Is this really the end of Radioactive Man? Find out soon!

The only catch is...

[dpbsmith]

...it can only remove it from polywater [wikipedia.org].

Small Typo in Article

[DieByWire]

After coming into contact with the mineral, radioactive water becomes completely safe.

It was supposed to say, 'Ten half-lives after coming into contact with the mineral, radioactive water becomes completely safe.'

Re:The applications are obvious

[mdmkolbe]

The mineral absorbs "radioactive substances", not the radiation itself.

While radiation poisoning can occur due to exposure to radiation and transmutation of the isotopes in the exposed substance, that particular effect is relatively minor.

The larger concern is that in the process of running a neuclear power plant, tiny flakes of the radioactive power rod detach and mix with flakes from other parts in the machinery thus forming a radioative dust. Since dust is so easily transfered, if I touch the dust and then I touch a book and then you touch the book, you may get a small amount of this radioactive dust on you. I didn't really make the book radioactive as much as I put dust that was radioactive on it. (Radiation suits don't actaully protect from direct radiation, they just make sure you don't track radioactive dust through the rest of the station.)

My guess is that this mineral is just filtering out heavy radioactive metals (i.e. taking the radioactive part of the dust out of the dust).

Sigh.

[SatanicPuppy]

This element has been discovered countless times before. It's common name is "Bullshitium" and it's used in turning lead to gold, eating up radiation, and can be used in pollution-less power plants.

There is only one way to "absorb" radiation, and everything does it already. Step outside and you're absorbing radiation.

Now, if there are radioactive particulates suspended in your water, you can filter those out with any sufficiently fine-grained filter. This is the most common form of radioactive water polluti