Once upon a time, there was a Swedish guy called Nobel. He was using an
explosive called nitroglycerine, made by mixing nitric acid with
glycerine. Very powerful - but very unstable. So he wanted to find a way
of making it usable. As it was, a single drop falling to the floor from
a work bench would explode - which was hard on peoples' feet.. So he
moved operations to a lakeshore away from folk who would prefer not to
be blown up. Any way, the stuff he used for transporting thishorribly
dangerous liquid was the dried muddy sediment from the lakeshore. So one
day, a little tube of nitroglycerine fell over on his workbench and
started trickling to the edge of the bench. Nobel knew what the next
event would be, so he took a handful of the dried lake sediment (which
was called kieselguhr or "fullers earth" or "diatomaceous earth") to mop
up the liquid - and avoided the explosion. And that's how he invented a
(relatively) safe explosive - he called it Dynamite. Remember the ol'
cowboys n Indians movies, where the Dynamite starts sweating in hot
weather?? It was sweating nitroglycerine! Anyway, that was then (1866)
and this is now. Now - over to New Mexico, where they have been stowing
radioactive waste liquids in 55 gal barrels with...you guessed it...
kieselguhr or diatomaceous earth. Now the powder they bought was sold as
Kitty-Litter - which you have noticed is good at mopping up pet pee. And
so everyone lived happily ever after - for ten years at least. Then,
somebody at Los Alamos went and bought a new improved Kitty-Litter - and
THIS kitty-liter was made of organics not the mineral powder of the
older kid. Unfortunately, when THIS stuff got warm, it started oxidizing
(slow burning essentially) until a barrel blew its top, and the
radioactive mud and steam blew the coop, and radiation clouds started
drifting east towards Oklahoma. And that's the rest of the story...
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