RE: [cdn-nucl-l] Explaining Food Irradiation

[George Stanford <gstanford@aya.yale.edu>]

Jaro:

        That same point bothered me.  But later on in the article, they say that the x-ray energy is 5 Mev or so, which is in fact considerably higher than Cs-137 (670 kev) and Co-60 (<1.4 Mev).  I guess what they are calling "x-rays" are really bremsstrahlung (??).

                Cheers,

                        George


At 01:11 PM 8/3/2003, Franta, Jaroslav wrote:

> I
> find one item in the article a bit confusing: 
>
> <begin
> quote> 
> Today, though, gamma rays are being
> superseded for food safety by two other kinds of radiation: electron
> beams (e-beams) and X-rays. .....gamma rays are useless for irradiating
> items like whole chickens. It turns out there is no speed at which a
> conventional conveyor could move to kill interior microbes without
> overexposing outer
>
> portions of the meat......The future of
> food irradiation seems to belong to e-beams and X-rays. ....
> X-rays 
> penetrate deeper into food. 
> <end
> quote> 
>
> ...if gammas don't
> penetrate deep enough, then X-rays certainly don't either !
> Gammas are definitely
> more penetrating than X-rays. 
> This sounds like
> propaganda for (from ?) electron-beam accelerator manufacturer, SureBeam
> Corp. ( who use e-beams to produce Brehmstrahlung X-rays, in their
> machines).