One gram of uranium has 20 billion calories – radiation aside, would that many calories at once kill you?
In:
Different kind of calories mate. You also wouldn’t absorb it either it would pass through you and if radiation is aside it’d be like eating a grain of sand.
Bizarrely, this has been asked before and answered very clearly.
Check it out [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/3xl78p/a_gram_uranium_is_roughly_20_billion_calories_if/). Short answer is no, because (a) they’re energy calories (a food calorie is 1 kcal), (b) they’re not bioavailable, and (c) there’s no matter to add to your body.
Interesting question.
So to pick apart your question.
We need to address a few things.
First, Calorie is a unit of energy. When they say 1 gram of uranium has 20 billion calories. They mean that when it *under goes fission* it will release 20 billion calories. Not that if you eat it you will get that many calories.
Two, your body can only extract energy from certain things. That’s why you can build a fire with wood and release a lot of energy. But you wouldn’t be able to just eat the wood and get the same.amount of energy. In fact, your body cant do.anything with it. You would get zero calories out of eating wood.
The same thing would happen here. You get zero calories because the process your body is using wont release that energy.
On a similar note, can i drink a gallon of gasoline and not have to eat for the rest of the year?
If you put radiation aside, a gram of uranium won’t have many calories. And none of those calories are likely to be bioavailable, so your body wouldn’t absorb them anyway. The’d just be excreted.
Assuming that the radiation didn’t matter at all, of course.