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by sandworm101 2241 days ago
>> the top meter of soil in your yard probably contains several kilograms of uranium.

No. That is way way off. Grams ... more likely milligrams and even that sounds too much.

3 comments

According to [1], "the normal concentration of uranium in soil is 300 μg/kg to 11.7 mg/kg." According to [2], the density of topsoil ranges from 1,100 to 2,500 kg/m^3. One acre is about 4,000 m^2, so a conservative estimate is that there is about 1.3 kg of uranium in 1 meter of top soil on a 1 acre lot. (4000 m^3 * 1100 kg/m^3 * 3x10^-7). That's just the low end - taking the midway point for both yields over 40kg (4000 m^3 * 1800 kg/m^3 * 6 mg/kg).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_in_the_environment

[2] https://structx.com/Soil_Properties_002.html

  on a 1 acre lot
Not many of us have all of an acre lot for our homes.
According to [1], 2 billion people are subsistence farmers with under 5 hectares. The population adjusted average seems to be around a quarter of a hectare (~0.6 acres) per person (which sounds low to me, as someone who has grown my own food without automation).

10^9 == many of us. Unless your definition of "us" is hacker news readers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture

Do the math. Average crustal abundance of U is around 3 ppm.
for a house in my neighbourhood I'd guess ~100 mg