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life pro tip!!
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Can they really get out THAT many calories from a gram of Uranium?! That's insane!
I wish I cared more and would verify it
Calories are just a measure of the energy released by a material.
Normally they're measured by burning the material, so it's not really accurate to say that you can get that many calories from uranium. On the other hand the whole concept is fucking stupid anyway, because it's measured by burning the material. Technically, a kilo of dry sawdust has 4800 calories (more than double the daily calorie requirement of the average person).
I just googled around and I think the meme inflated the numbers. Fast neutron reactor gets 28GJ/g, which is "only" about 7 million food (kilo) calories.