Radioactive Materials ( Uranium )

SpaceDorf · February 21, 2017, 09:22:58 AM

Poison ships can kill the area around them.

The Crashlanding Mod has a Reactor that causes Radiation Damage ..

In my oppinion Uranium should be dangerous too.
I am to lazy to look up the real science here, so if someone is offended or knows better, please chime in.

It should just have a small radius around it, that causes radiation poisoning .. the "ore" tiles, the mined stuff and even stuff made from it, if not proper shielded.

In addition to that I would love to see some toxic waste deposits on the planets ..
Toxic Barrels in Tombs in the Mountains,
Poisonous lakes and so on .. not many but a small chance of this happening ..

modern societies have the habit of leaving such filth around, especially after bombing themselves back into the stone-age

Thyme · February 22, 2017, 03:44:51 AM

Radioactive isotopes with short or long decay times are not the dangerous ones. They're either gone (almost) immediately (¹¹C, 20mins*) or take so long to decay that the activity is spread out indefinitely (²³⁸U, 4.5 billion years). It's the middle decay times that are so dangerous. If I had choose to sit either on ¹³⁷Cs (30 days) or ²³⁸U, I know where I would place my balls.

*a half life of 20mins is on the longer end of the "decays-quickly" spectrum, but the transition is of course smooth.

SpaceDorf · February 22, 2017, 10:14:57 AM

Thanks for the clarification .. now do you agree or disagree with the suggestion

Miridor · February 23, 2017, 04:30:01 AM

Disagree for ores. Most natural ores have long radiation decay times. When you centrifuge pure uranium (not ore, but 100% stuff) and then take the enriched part. Now that does give SOME radiation. But it only gets really REALLY dangerous when you use it in a nuclear reactor. Then all kinds of fission products are produced which are NASTY. In the current 'Mid-world' called Earth, most of the times they stop there and have a huge problem storing this stuff. Why? Because governments don't like other governments producing stuff like 'pure' plutonium which can be used to make atomic weapons. But if you have a 'proper' reactor design, you can 'burn' most of the radioactive isotopes, utilize 90%+ of the power potential and have very little nuclear waste. Also.... Thorium reactors (The other, other nuclear power

) should be a thing.

SpaceDorf · February 23, 2017, 05:52:19 AM

Thanks

That really clarifies things.

And though I believe you that Ores should not be volatile, I still think
the chance of some hidden Midworld Crap should be there ..

Somewhere a forgotten Nuke exploded prepare for toxic rain .. .. that would be a nice event ..

Perq · February 24, 2017, 02:01:10 AM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake

Think this might be a good read. :-) Yellowcake can be pretty much held in a bottle in your house, and it probably won't have much an effect on you.
If you are looking for dangerous sources of radiation, then probably flying a drop pod is probably waaay more dangerous.

Thyme · March 02, 2017, 11:18:53 AM

Dunno how it's for your country, but having radioactive substances in your house in Austria will have an effect on you. Definitely not of physical nature, more the law-enforcement nature

SpaceDorf · March 03, 2017, 08:33:23 AM

I am aware that there are different "secure" implementations for radioactive materials .. X-Rays alone are a good example.

What I wanted to suggest is that there should be some unsafe variants around.
Just to spice things up on the Rim and introduce some long term problems in comparison to the short term problems of raids and solar events.