[HN Gopher] Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
___________________________________________________________________
Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 346 points
Date : 2022-09-02 13:22 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (osrp.lanl.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (osrp.lanl.gov)
| bhaak wrote:
| Wonder how I slided into the world of Fallout?
|
| WTF!?! We have plutonium powered pacemakers?
|
| http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/
|
| Ah, okay we _had_.
|
| > Despite the often longer life-expectancies, nuclear pacemakers
| quickly became a part of the past when lithium batteries were
| developed. Not only did the technology improve, allowing for
| lighter, smaller, and programmable pacemakers, but doctors began
| to realize that this excessive longevity of nuclear pacemakers
| was excessive. Lithium pacemakers often last 10-15 years allowing
| for doctors to check in on their patients and replace either the
| batteries or the pacemakers themselves with new and improved
| technology as it is develops in those 10-15 year spans.
| mysterydip wrote:
| > allowing for doctors to check in on their patients and
| replace either the batteries or the pacemakers themselves
|
| I cynically read this as "we needed to get more money out of
| these patients"
| hwillis wrote:
| You really should not. 60 beats per minute means that in ten
| years the leads of a pacemaker will be bent *315 million*
| times. That's an order of magnitude higher than we typically
| test fatigue resistance, and even if we were that confident
| about being able to produce flawless materials, there are
| _millions_ of different enzymes and acids and temperature
| fluctuations in the body. Any one of those could impact the
| fatigue resistance.
|
| Additionally, any kind of implanted device is _significantly_
| prone to a wide range of problems that range from
| inconvenient to devastating. The human body is very hostile
| to foreign objects, often with few warning signs. Clots and
| fibrous capsules (and eventually, calcified capsules) form
| around ANY implant, and that 's the _best_ case problem.
|
| Titanium is extremely biocompatible. It forms a thinner
| capsule than most materials. It integrates with bones
| beautifully, due to surface treatments that allow bone to
| grow into microscopic surface cavities, with strong molecular
| bonds. But also sometimes, for no apparent reason, all the
| bone around a titanium implant will just start dying and
| resorbing. It's rare, but if you get a hip replacement you
| absolutely need to check on it regularly because if you don't
| you'll lose use of the leg completely (and quickly, and
| permanently).
|
| In and around the heart is one of the most challenging places
| to implant things, aside from maybe the brain. Any moving
| part of the body will constantly stress any mechanical part,
| and build up scar tissue around and rubbing spots. The only
| reason the brain is worse is because its fragile and changes
| size significantly when you sleep.
|
| Recently we started using _leadless_ pacemakers. Even before
| that pacemakers were continually getting smaller, and smaller
| pacemakers are less irritating and experience less stress and
| movement. Even if that weren 't true, it would _still_ be
| worth checking in on pacemakers, because they 're doing
| incredibly hard jobs and if they fail people can die faster
| than they can get to a hospital.
|
| EDIT: oh, and heart disease is the #1 cause of death in the
| US, while heart surgery is one of the most difficult
| specialties to get in to. They are absolutely never short on
| patients, lol.
| nousermane wrote:
| > _315 million_ times. That 's an order of magnitude higher
| than we typically test fatigue resistance
|
| Nah, it's not that bad. Decent mechanical keyboard switch
| is specified for 100 million clicks [1, or google for
| "switch million actuations"]. Surely good engineering can
| eek out another order of magnitude. Not to mention -
| pacemaker leads ("wires"), the only part that bends, have
| _way_ less stress on them (= larger bend radius) compared
| to a keyboard switch. Oh, and technology of multi-strand
| wire for redundancy is a very well established and
| understood one.
|
| [1] https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/product-
| files/4974/EN_CHERRY_M...
| pixl97 wrote:
| You're not counting failure rate over time. How many
| people actually click a key 100M clicks? What does the
| bathtub curve look like? What's the failure rates at
| 1,10,100,200M clicks?
|
| I'm going to assume those failure numbers are far higher
| than you'd want for something keeping you alive.
| [deleted]
| cududa wrote:
| The absolutely arrogance to assume a keyboard switch and
| a pace maker are anywhere near the same thing...
| tom_ wrote:
| Indeed, the keyboard switch people have to produce a
| device that's manufacturable at scale for pennies per
| unit, and can be fitted in unforgiving environments by
| the untrained.
| macintux wrote:
| They also make a product that, when it fails, doesn't
| generally kill anyone.
| melq wrote:
| How is that comparable to a pacemaker in any way? They
| aren't made for a similar scale, price, or 'environment',
| and would only be installed/serviced/dealt with at all by
| anyone aside from highly trained specialists.
| monetus wrote:
| Intentions aside, I read it as a very narrow comparison
| of the relative durability - I'm guessing they weren't
| trying to devalue pacemaker engineering.
| [deleted]
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| I've had Cherry switches fail right as the keyboard's
| warranty was up. The switch feels soft after wearing out,
| it gets dust in it and starts double typing, etc.
| Pacemakers need to be 100% reliable, not 99.9%.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Seen way too many failed Cherry MX (OG, vintage and
| third-party) switches to believe that.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| > EDIT: oh, and heart disease is the #1 cause of death in
| the US, while heart surgery is one of the most difficult
| specialties to get in to. They are absolutely never short
| on patients, lol.
|
| This is still relevant to his concern, but from the other
| end. They might be making the labor artificially scarce to
| increase pay.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| > _This is still relevant to his concern, but from the
| other end. They might be making the labor artificially
| scarce to increase pay._
|
| This is very much true. I find that a lot of people in
| tech seem to put healthcare on a pedestal and believe
| that the professionalisation and gatekeeping of the
| industry create a better outcome than other engineering
| fields. This is very much untrue, the healthcare field is
| in need of massive disruption and lobbying to increase
| labor supply. You are being downvoted because a lot of
| tech people here hate to imagine that healthcare at the
| highest level is still subject to market forces like
| everything else. Medical training is being severely
| gatekept and hindered via the current
| apprenticeship/residency system. After all, we call the
| worst medical student, doctor. If you want to improve
| healthcare, tie medical school admission to the MCAT
| score, and _only_ the MCAT score. You are not going to
| get better doctors just because candidates spend their
| summers building houses in some impoverished third world
| country.
| zaroth wrote:
| I live near Boston which is known for its medical
| centers, so this might skew things somewhat, but it seems
| like every graduate I know is going into medicine of some
| form (surgery, anesthesia, nursing, surgical tech,
| hospice, etc. etc.)
|
| I heard consistently that residency slots are extremely
| competitive and a lot of qualified candidates get passed
| over. The more I learn about the process the more insane
| it seems.
|
| From the student perspective you go from paying to work
| one day and spending most your time working cases with
| zero relevance to your actual specialty, to raking in
| several hundred thousand a year.
|
| It also seems like hospital systems seem to spend more
| than half their capacity either dealing with patients
| that don't need to be there but there's literally no
| place to send them, or patients that are too far gone and
| untreatable but there's literally no place to send them.
|
| Healthcare is like a Gordian knot of terrible policies
| cemented into place by trillions of dollars of government
| spending.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| More like deliberately increasing demand for the service.
| zaroth wrote:
| Are you positing a conspiracy between McDonalds and
| Cardiothoracic Surgeons?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>"changes size significantly when you sleep."
|
| Wait,what??
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Brain neurons going into sleep mode eject some of the
| cell contents and shrink, which apparently also helps
| flush waste because the cerebrospinal fluid can flow
| better.
| rudididdjdh wrote:
| furyofantares wrote:
| It's a weird argument, though, that we should be checking
| in on the state of the patient & these devices, but we
| don't do it unless we have the additional problem of
| needing to replace a battery.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Modern devices provide a wealth of telemetry completely
| autonomously. My pacemaker talks at least daily to a UFO
| shaped brick on my night stand via BLE. The brick has an
| integrated cell modem, and was given to me pre-
| configured. It has a bright green light (that turns off
| in the dark) to show that it's functional. It has a
| single button I have never pressed, for if I think
| something notable enough happened that my doctor's office
| needs to be sent a report sooner than every 90 days or
| so.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'd think cert expiration would have taught all of us
| that out of sight and working is out of a busy,
| multitasking mind.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| It sounds like you have quite a bit of knowledge on the
| subject. I had to get a pacemaker a couple years ago, and
| am an embedded engineer. I hope to live another 50 years at
| least, so this is an interesting subject for me.
|
| Maybe my cardiologist is just trying to make me feel good,
| but he says my leads will likely last 30-50 years.
| Intuitively that seems unlikely, but we'll see. It's got to
| be one of the most engineered cables in existence.
|
| The leadless pacemakers are indeed a technical marvel, but
| they aren't yet nearly as feature packed as shoulder
| implanted devices. They'll keep your heart from stopping if
| your nerves are flaky from time to time, but they don't
| have the energy storage to do much more than that. Mine
| monitors every single beat my heart takes, and
| automatically reports issues to my doctor via BLE. (Is
| bluetooth more or less scary than radioactive isotopes
| mounted in your body?)
|
| For about 8 months, my AV nerves were completely broken,
| and the pacemaker paced my ventricles 100% of the time. It
| was a nearly perfect drop-in replacement for the failed
| nerves. A leadless pacemaker wouldn't have had nearly the
| same performance. My nerves eventually started mostly
| working again, and now I'm on track to have a battery life
| pushing 15 years.
|
| It would of course be great for the technology to advance
| even more over the next decade. Since my nerves mostly
| healed, a leadless device with a 30+ year battery life
| would be a nice replacement. With a shorter battery life, I
| don't really want to be collecting them in my heart (they
| don't plan to remove leadless pacemakers when they die.)
| I'm hoping by the time my current device is worn out, it
| will have logged enough telemetry for me to convince my
| cardiologist that I don't need a pacemaker at all, though.
| guhidalg wrote:
| My heart sank when you mentioned a BLE-enabled pacemaker.
| Has technology gone too far? /s
| melq wrote:
| It sounds like the bluetooth functionality is only there
| for telemetry.
| samstave wrote:
| An interesting thought would be to have a nano-lead down
| the arterials to the wrist, where an external telemetry
| relay-watch could read the signals, and have the BLE
| device top dermal. (apple watch)
|
| eliminating RF/BLE bullshit from talking to the
| pacemaker.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Being pragmatic, that sounds way worse than just having a
| little ceramic 2.4ghz antenna and some extra silicon
| potted into the device!
| samstave wrote:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2379009/Barnaby-
| Jac...
|
| -
|
| Oops - I didnt realize you were same poster from other
| comment
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I don't think my particular pacemaker has the necessary
| circuitry to generate more than 5V, in pulses less than a
| few milliseconds. The voltage doesn't really matter much
| to the muscle.
|
| If you got in you could probably put the leads into
| single-ended mode (so that there's more current path to
| cause mayhem) and pace my atrium and ventricles at
| 210bpm, and effectively give me a seizure. I can't
| imagine it would kill me before an EMS arrived with a
| magnet?
|
| Perhaps a more nuanced attack would be to somehow use all
| the configuration parameters to intentionally bias the
| pulses so that there's net charge going into the muscle.
| Over a long time that would cause tissue damage.
|
| If someone wanted to kill me overtly, a gun would be less
| work. A pacemaker malfunction that bad would be
| thoroughly investigated, and would be fixed in new
| devices within a year or two.
| RavZterz wrote:
| If they were able to cause the pacemaker to fire when
| they wanted they could time it during the repolarization,
| which could possibly cause a fatal arrhythmia even in a
| heart that doesn't need a pacemaker. It's called R-on-T
| phenomenon and it's usually caused by malfunctioning
| pacemakers.
| samstave wrote:
| The crazy thing was that this was when there was a lot of
| talk about Dick Cheney and how he was vuln to this attack
| -- and there was a lot of spec around if barnaby was
| silenced because it was the older, Cheney-esque
| politicians that could be taken out by this vector...
|
| Perhaps, he got the 'reverse bounty' on this bug...
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| It's not. It's a full diagnostic interface. Someone with
| the right software and my serial number could reconfigure
| it from across the room.
|
| BLE replaces the previous diagnostic interface, which was
| some form of near-field. You had to have a puck resting
| within a few inches, going to a several decade old
| toughbook. My device supports both. It's just in the last
| couple years that UCLA got the BLE equipment, and
| sometimes a doctor will whip out the old gear if they
| feel more confident with it.
|
| When I had the pacemaker first implanted, there was a
| reliability problem they had to do a second operation to
| fix it. The pacemaker failed to "capture" my ventricle a
| few times when it should have. It turned out to be a
| loose lead connection, but the device's impedance
| diagnostics didn't make the issue immediately obvious. My
| overall case was weird enough that UCLA did a case study
| about it, so for the revision procedure they had a vendor
| rep in the room to help out just in case. She was holding
| a tablet and pushing buttons that would make my heart
| temporarily stop.
|
| Now my AV nerves mostly work again, so the pacemaker
| can't stop my heart if it wanted to. It can only increase
| my heart rate, and report unusual patterns to my doctor.
| Also, if someone did somehow mess with it, holding a
| strong magnet near it will force it into safe mode.
| spicybright wrote:
| That's fascinating, and very unfortunate how lax the
| security likely is for an organ keeping you alive.
|
| You would think if you can detect a strong magnet, you
| could use that to turn the wireless on and off... Like
| how holding a power button on a phone turns it off, but
| holding longer can do a factory reset or what have you.
|
| Glad you're doing better since then, though.
| samstave wrote:
| >> _I had to get a pacemaker a couple years ago, and am
| an __embedded engineer__._
|
| <3 -- This sounds like a badge of courage-type
| Classification. I love this sentence.
|
| -
|
| Recall BARNABY JACK? (the guy who claimed he could build
| a pacemaker killer and was to present at DEFCON and then
| "suicided" over drugs (yes, I know he had a drug problem
| - but he was lit going to give a talk at defcon about
| this subject)
|
| I am so fucking tired of people who downvote on HN
| because they dont know their fucking internet history:
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2379009/Barnaby-
| Jac...
|
| You shouldnt be able to downvote with at least a 140
| character reason why.
|
| READ THE FUCK UP. Barnaby was set to talk at defcon about
| killing pacemakers remotely... and he was also able to
| hack other medical devices.
|
| ( _HN rules say you shouldnt complain about downvotes! -
| screw that, should I have to give the full historical
| context if someone doesnt know what I am talking about.
|
| I almost NEVER downvote people. Its not helpful, because
| a lot of downvoters may not have a deeper context of
| connection..._)
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Lol. I've certainly already made the joke that embedded
| systems are dear to my heart. I'd consider working a few
| years at a place like Medtronic just to see what I can
| contribute, but on the other hand I hear there's roughly
| a 2:1 ratio between requirements and lines of code.
|
| Going through airport security is fun just because the
| TSA agents overreact as if the metal detector is going to
| kill me.
| samstave wrote:
| DYSTOPIAN OUTCOME:
|
| /u/sgtnoodle has accepted a great job with MedTronic,
| little does he know, that as a QA process embedded
| engineer, his duties require him to monitor various labs
| - including the PENTEST/AGGRESSIVE attack lab... but the
| anechoic chamber contract was low bid - and has leaks...
|
| As he walks by the lab, checking his tablet for his
| various checklists... there is a leak.
|
| A deadly leak... As he rounds Corridor-4A toward his
| desk, the leak hits him.
|
| As a Class-I Mk2 Embedded engineer, he was susceptible to
| the RF attacks...
|
| We only found him after the alarm sounded that he badged
| through Door X1A, but never made it to Door TR3B where
| his lab was...
|
| Cardiac failure due to failed electro-stim documented as
| cause of termination of employment.
| LastTrain wrote:
| You are getting downvoted for the conspiracy theory
| aspect of your post and for throwing shade on a guy with
| the pacemaker. If you care about being liked, say
| likeable things.
| samstave wrote:
| You're getting a FU from me for even using the term
| "conspiracy theory" as you adopt its MSM meaning...
|
| You clearly did not grasp what I said.
|
| Fucking think. (13 days vs >13 years)
| alphaoverlord wrote:
| If you have complete AV block, a leadless pacemaker is
| less good than one with multiple leads, since it allows
| pacing multiple chambers and maintaining synchrony
| between A and V.
| animatedb wrote:
| There are now leadless devices that communicate with each
| other using RF.
| lake-view wrote:
| > Maybe my cardiologist is just trying to make me feel
| good, but he says my leads will likely last 30-50 years.
| Intuitively that seems unlikely, but we'll see. It's got
| to be one of the most engineered cables in existence.
|
| One of my favorite learnings in school was about the
| "Endurance limit".
|
| Some materials, like aluminum, will eventually fail under
| cyclic loading even at tiny, tiny loads. This was a big
| problem when they built the first passenger jets. Other
| materials, like steel, have a threshold at which they can
| be cycled _indefinitely_ without issue.
|
| For something like a pacemaker, I like to imagine they
| dialed the materials and forces to be within such a
| threshold so you can keep on ticking!
| tengwar2 wrote:
| Re passenger jets - I imagine you are thinking of the
| Comet 1? That was a more complex failure than is
| generally known. In brief, they did know about fatigue
| life at the time, and had ways of retiring aircraft
| before it was an issue (safe-life design, apparently
| introduced in the 19C for steam engines despite their
| being iron and steel). Ok, now you will be thinking
| "square windows, stress concentrators". Almost all
| pressurised aircraft use windows with angled corners in
| the cockpit. There isn't an intrinsic bar to square
| windows, and in fact the original design would probably
| have been ok. That used glued installation, avoiding
| stress concentrators. However a production engineer
| changed the design to use riveted installation, which
| caused the well-known problem with hull failure. Still,
| that would have been discovered if DH had not managed to
| resist government pressure to do fatigue testing on the
| pressure hull (because they were racing Boeing to be
| first to market, and fatigue testing takes time). They
| actually had the apparatus for repeatedly pressurising
| the hull in a bath, but only used it for testing static
| pressure.
| tomrod wrote:
| Meh. Maintenance is a good thing when performed well and not
| excessively.
|
| Heart problems are funky.
| konschubert wrote:
| I read this as:
|
| Most patients don't survive those 10 years anyways.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I'd rather live an extra 9 years than 0.
|
| We're all going to die and an extra 9 years is not bad.
| dghughes wrote:
| My Dad was diagnosed with a fatal lung illness and was
| given three years to live. He made it to ten years the
| last six months were rough. But I can't imagine if he had
| died after the predicted three years.
|
| I see people Dad's age or older driving and walking
| around and I find it amazing how older people are alive.
| Elderly people are amazing as people and for their
| knowledge.
|
| Love every day you and your family are here and healthy!
| konschubert wrote:
| I did not mean to say that they are not worth it.
| mlyle wrote:
| A number don't. But as far as the number that needs some
| kind of pacemaker tune-up or revision during that time--
| it's a really big share.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| If battery life doesn't improve much, I don't die
| prematurely, and I continue to materially benefit from
| having an implant, I personally could be realistically
| looking at 3 replacement devices and at least one lead
| replacement over the years. In the unlikely event that I
| suffer from ventricle enlargement long term, I'd need two
| more leads installed as well.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yup, there's definitely some patients that would benefit
| from a nuclear battery.
|
| > I personally could be realistically looking at 3
| replacement devices and at least one lead replacement
| over the years. In the unlikely event that I suffer from
| ventricle enlargement long term, I'd need two more leads
| installed as well.
|
| This is the point I'm making, though: realistically, you
| have a high chance of needing 2 additional procedures for
| non-battery reasons, which are likely good times to
| replace the device, too.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| My grandfather got a pacemaker in the late 1970's.
|
| He died in 2014, not from heart-related issues.
|
| I'd say that was a good return on medical investment.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| The figures surrounding pacemakers are hard to interpret.
| Most people are fitted extremely late in their life
| following serious cardiac incidents.
|
| My understanding is that people diagnosed with bradycardia
| young can expect to survive a long time with the device.
| konschubert wrote:
| You are right. When you read the studies, they seem
| gloom. But of course, most people who are fitted a
| pacemaker are already very late in their life.
| patrickserrano wrote:
| Glad I'm not the only cynical one ;)
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Seems like maybe don't be cynical outside of your own
| specialty might be a lesson here.
| toss1 wrote:
| A friend had one of these units that extended his life for
| over a decade. He had it upgraded at least once, and the
| programing updated several times, and noted improvements each
| time (although he never got the one feature he really wanted
| [0]). So active maintenance is definitely not spurious or
| mercenary but is genuinely useful.
|
| [0] When the pacemaker detected a problematic arrhythmia it
| would give a couple of defibrillation shocks just like the
| paddles but right on the heart muscle. He said this felt like
| getting kicked in the chest by a horse and came completely
| out of the blue with zero warning. So it could be quite
| disruptive. He wanted a feature where it would tingle or beep
| or something just a few seconds ahead of time so he could
| mentally prepare; apparently the second one that was expected
| was a lot less traumatic. Anyway, the docs thought it was a
| good idea, and passed it up, but it never happened before he
| passed.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| That's an implantable cardiac defibrillator not a
| pacemaker. Completely different things.
| toss1 wrote:
| It had both functions, at least according to my friend;
| he was an engineer and he described both in some detail.
| leeoniya wrote:
| > He wanted a feature where it would tingle or beep or
| something just a few seconds ahead of time so he could
| mentally prepare; apparently the second one that was
| expected was a lot less traumatic.
|
| reminds me of the pre-safe sound prior to collision
|
| https://www.mercedesbenzofnatick.com/new-features-
| mercedes-b...
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes, it does -- Thx for reminding me of that!
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| I'm not clear on what he was supposed to do in response to
| this. Is it a situation where if he were to sit down and
| relax he could resolve the arrhythmia? Or is this a
| notification mechanisms that he can then alert his doctors?
| (My question is why was this designed to be an extreme
| "notification ")?
| toss1 wrote:
| He just wanted some kind of warning to get himself
| mentally prepared or braced for the kick - maybe take a
| quick breath, pull out of the way a tool he's using,
| whatever, or just reduce the surprise factor. As he said,
| the second one that he knew was coming was not such a big
| deal. It was definitely not to try to resolve it, that
| was up to the pacemaker/defib.
| happyopossum wrote:
| There's not a single cardiac surgeon in the world who thinks
| he's gonna get rich with once-every-10-years follow up
| appointments. We produce enough new patients to keep them all
| sufficiently busy.
| robocat wrote:
| A private surgery business that specialised in pacemakers
| would surely care, because those 10yr repeat customers
| would be part of the valuation (valued like SaaS with long
| duration and high churn?). That would matter to a surgeon
| with an ownership stake on retirement.
|
| I agree that a surgeon at a general hospital probably
| wouldn't care (little financial incentive).
| Calavar wrote:
| Private practice is quickly going extinct in the US. It's
| generally not an option for US residency and fellowship
| graduates these days unless they are in one of the
| specialties that has cash payors (plastics, dermatology,
| orthopedics, a small number of "concierge" primary care
| docs and psychiatrists that cater to rich patients, and a
| small number of ophthalmology practices that carved out a
| good Lasik business).
|
| The vast majority of pacemakers are placed by
| cardiologists with an additional two years of training in
| electrophysiology (not by cardiothoracic surgeons, who
| prefer to do complicated open heart surgeries and
| generally find things like pacemakers boring).
|
| Contrary to the conspiratorial thinking all over this
| thread, medical society guidelines have _scaled back_ the
| indications for putting in pacemakers time and time
| again, so the market has shrunk. Electrophysiologists
| have to make up for the lost pacemaker volume by doing
| newer procedures (ablations) that reimburse less per hour
| of work. Even then, the volume at a lot of shops isn 't
| enough to merit full time work. A lot of graduating
| electrophysiologists have to take mixed
| electrophysiology/general cardiology jobs where less than
| 50% of the work is electrophysiology.
|
| All that is to say, no, pacemakers are not a money making
| scheme. While there is decent money to be made, it's a
| shrinking market and those who got obscenely rich putting
| in pacemakers in the 80s and 90s have mostly already
| retired.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| Looked at my scales this morning, boy are you right.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >longevity of nuclear pacemakers was excessive
|
| Same. In what world can a lifesaving device run excessively
| long? One with our health system is where...
| hkgjjgjfjfjfjf wrote:
| rwmj wrote:
| Until now I assumed that _all_ pacemakers were nuclear powered,
| since I read about this as a kid in some children 's science
| book. It's come as a surprise to find out they're unusual.
| afterburner wrote:
| > Due to the extremely high risk and toxicity involved with
| using plutonium, numerous layers and shields were woven into
| these pacemakers resulting in larger and heavier devices.
| Despite strong concern of radiation exposure, the actual risk
| of exposure from these plutonium-powered pacemakers was almost
| non-existent.
|
| What a strange phrase. I would say it was _because_ of the
| concern of the risk of radiation, not "despite" it, leading to
| the precautions built into the device, that the risk was
| reduced to "almost non-existent".
|
| Or is this a claim that the shielding was unnecessary?
| michaelt wrote:
| The claim here is "The risk was tiny due to the superb
| shielding - but patients were still wary and preferred their
| implants not have any nuclear material at all"
| jerry1979 wrote:
| I think it reads like:
|
| Even though people might worry about radiation from the
| device, the actual risk (due to all the shielding) is almost
| non-existent.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm just imaginging trying to explain to TSA that this is the
| reason their radiological alarms are going off...
| adenner wrote:
| That already happens for other medical uses of isotopes.
| bad416f1f5a2 wrote:
| I think my step zero would be to pause and ask myself how I got
| myself in a situation like this.
| jakedata wrote:
| The first thing I thought of when I saw the pacemaker photo was
| to adapt the miniature RTG to power a digital watch. People have
| Nixie tube watches, I want my RTG powered watch.
|
| I'd use a capacitor to accumulate a charge which would power one
| of the really old-school LED digital watches of the early 70s.
|
| Totally impractical, dangerous and illegal? Sign me up!
| aaaaaasss wrote:
| bookofjoe wrote:
| This is a new record for me: top of HN homepage 20 minutes after
| submission
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Even more annoying to some: still there after two hours
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Make that three hours and counting
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Four
| bookofjoe wrote:
| 5
| bookofjoe wrote:
| 6
| rob74 wrote:
| So this is the same technology as used in various space probes
| and the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-
| mission_radioisotope_the...), just miniaturized. Fascinating, but
| not sure if I would want to have one inside my body...
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Well, if the other option is that your heart won't work without
| one, and you are already elderly, why not?
| acchow wrote:
| Any chance we can get a nuclear-powered iPhone which lasts 4
| years?
| gurjeet wrote:
| Please stop spreading unsubstantiated FUD. If you have the data
| to prove otherwise, please share the links.
|
| I have had an iPhone 7 for many years; yes, same device. I
| don't remember the exact time when I got it, but it might've
| been around 2017. So this device is over 5, if not 6, years
| old. In all this time, I've had to replace only the screen due
| to physical damage, but the phone is otherwise perfectly
| functional. I've been told a few times that the battery needs
| replacement, but that's primarily because the phone reports
| battery's "Maximum Capacity" is 73%; but I'm reluctant to
| replace the battery because I haven't had any problems with the
| current battery.
|
| Another data point: I bought an iPad Air 2 in November 2016 for
| my kids, and it's been used by my kids, changing hands as the
| older one grew out of it, and has had zero issues. Yes, it's
| screen has got scratches, and it's got blemishes on the body.
| But it's been running along just fine for over 7 years now.
| It's getting OS updates, even though it's been discontinued for
| over 5 years. I cannot say that for any of the Android devices
| I had bought, not even the ones made by Google.
|
| Before getting the iPhone, I was firmly in the "android is
| best" camp, and I was almost against buying Apple devices,
| primarily for the cost of the hardware. I have bought phones,
| and a tablet, powered by Android, but none of them lasted long
| enough for me to extract value out of my investment. Either
| they died early because of some hardware failure, or because
| the device stopped getting updates.
|
| After trying iPhone, and Apple's other hardware, like MacBooks,
| I have become a fan of the _quality_ of their products. Their
| products may not give the customer the same freedoms (of
| choice) and flexibilities that we've come to expect from Linux
| and Android worlds, but their products serve the needs of their
| customers for long durations, and in a way that no other
| company possesses the ability to do.
|
| If you are of the type who pines for products of a bygone era
| where the products used to last decades, serving the customers
| faithfully without much fuss, I think you should seriously
| consider buying Apple devices.
| lake-view wrote:
| I think they meant the charge lasts for 4 years, not the
| phone itself.
| gurjeet wrote:
| The comment complains about the device itself, and not any
| specific components of it.
|
| > Any chance we can get a nuclear-powered iPhone which
| lasts 4 years?
| acchow wrote:
| I didn't complain about anything. I'm using an iPhone
| from 2018, but I have to charge it every day. Would be
| nice to not charge it at all from the time I buy it (like
| a nuclear power source)
| gurjeet wrote:
| Your comment made it sound like you were unhappy with the
| longevity of the device itself.
|
| > iPhone that lasts 4 years
|
| Sorry if that was not your intent.
| macintux wrote:
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| From the site guidelines. The most plausible interpretation
| by far is that the comment referred to the time between
| charges; otherwise, what would nuclear power do to extend the
| lifespan of a device?
| drraj32 wrote:
| Just got me thinking: What would it take for us to get to a point
| where there are small, safe nuclear powered "batteries", that can
| supply enough electricity for a building.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Far better would be a Pebble Bed Reactor, which more or less
| fits into a couple of shipping containers and provides a
| building's worth of power and heat for about ten years with a
| similar level of maintenance as a diesel genny.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| That doesn't sound like any PBR I've ever heard of. Which
| design are you talking about?
| fulafel wrote:
| XKCD style what-if:
|
| We'd need to have a lot of money, a disregard for return of
| investment and a lot patience: Current RTGs can do that, but
| they're rather expensive for heating houses and problematic
| from the nuclear materials POV (waste / profileration), not to
| mention the regulatory and licensing for using it a
| neighbourhood - better budget the time and money for lobbying
| for some legislation changes.
|
| If by building we mean say 10 apartments, and each needs 10 kW,
| the RTG would need hundreds of kg of Pu-238 plutonim dioxide
| [1].
|
| It's hard to cite the exact cost for that since it's not a
| freely traded commodity but that's a lot of plutonium. Eg NASA
| said that with a $75-90 million investment they can make 1.5-2
| kg per year of it. [2]
|
| [1] https://drinksavvyinc.com/blog/how-much-does-a-
| radioisotope-... gives 2 kW per 5 kg [2]
| https://www.space.com/20774-plutonium-spacecraft-fuel-nasa-b...
| klodolph wrote:
| It would take some kind of complete revolution. It's not
| happening.
|
| These batteries have very poor power density and are very
| inefficient. The advantages of nuclear-powered batteries are:
|
| - They generate power over a long time, decades,
|
| - They generate some heat.
|
| They don't generate much power. If you have a building, you
| would definitely think of a nuclear RTG as a "very shitty
| battery", and that's even if you don't care at all about
| radioactivity.
|
| Thinking of these as a "battery" is also a bit misleading, IMO.
| These are really just small power plants, which generate heat
| and turn the heat into electricity. The heat is powered by
| radioactive decay of Pu-238, and then turned into electricity
| with the extremely inefficient Seebeck effect. If you had a
| source of heat you wanted to turn into electricity, it's much
| more efficient to use that heat to turn a turbine which is
| connected to a generator. And if you want an efficient, cost-
| effictive turbine, you make it big. At that point, you have a
| power plant.
| adrian_b wrote:
| While Pu-238 is an alpha emitter, so it is difficult to
| capture the decay energy in any other way than by converting
| heat into electrical energy, for the radioactive isotopes
| that are beta emitters there is an alternative where the
| nuclear batteries function in a way very similar to a
| chemical battery.
|
| The beta decaying substance is connected electrically to one
| electrode of a capacitor, while the electrons emitted due to
| the beta decay are able to pass through the insulating layer
| of the capacitor, reaching the other electrode.
|
| Thus the capacitor is charged directly by the beta-decay and
| it can provide electrical energy to the external circuit.
| drraj32 wrote:
| Thanks for the insights. I was thinking if we can make
| nuclear power generation small, it can avoid the stigma
| associated with big nuclear power plants. At that point it
| might become a viable source of energy to replace fossil
| fuels.
| srvmshr wrote:
| Not related to nuclear, but the startup Bloom Energy was aiming
| this by fuel cells. A small box could power a house for a year,
| as they claimed. Trouble was the box internals run at very high
| temperatures (800degC) and there was potential for things going
| awry.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Energy
| Danieru wrote:
| This is established and commonly installed technology in
| Japan. It's called EneFarm. Lots of newish houses connected
| to natural gas have these largish boxes out front. The odd
| name leaves most people confused.
|
| The EneFarms used to be heavily subsidized by the japanese
| government in a long term program to encourage fuel cell
| development and manufacturing. Over time prices have
| decreased such that the subsidy is either already expired or
| could be soon expired.
|
| The tech is near, and allows getting a bit more energy out if
| natural gas. The gas companies hope it will allow them to
| eventually reuse their pipes to send hydrogen. Personally I
| think the combo of cheap solar panels and 400% efficiency
| heat pumps will outcompete gas.
| OJFord wrote:
| Just because you pay a positive non-zero amount for less
| than a quarter of the energy in, it does not mean that a
| device has greater than 100% efficiency, which is not
| possible.
|
| If heat pumps are 400% efficient then log burners in cabins
| in the woods are even better.
| mminer237 wrote:
| All energy from log burners comes from the fuel, and some
| ashes remain unburnt. They're under 100% efficient at
| converting fuel to heat. You put in x fuel and <x heat.
|
| A heat pump takes heat from outside the system. You put
| in x fuel and you get >x heat. Getting more energy than
| you put in makes the efficiency over 100%.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| > They're under 100% efficient at converting fuel to heat
|
| I think only matter-antimatter reaction comes close to
| 100%. Burning fuels isn't even 1% of that.
| OJFord wrote:
| I know. You can't just ignore the bulk of the input and
| still call it 'efficiency' though.
|
| Even manufacturers call this 'coefficient of
| performance', not efficiency.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Since precise use of language is so important to you:
|
| > _" You can't [...]"_
|
| He did, so obviously he can. You mean _shouldn 't_, not
| _can 't._
| marshray wrote:
| An implied qualification of "you can't [while remaining
| logically consistent]" is common usage.
| cedilla wrote:
| Impossible in a closed system. Extremely common
| elsewhere.
| jackcarter wrote:
| A heat pump warms a home more efficiently than using the
| same amount of electricity for resistive heating. It can
| do this because it's not generating the heat from
| scratch; it's moving heat from outside to inside.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump#Performance
| xattt wrote:
| A local company has developed a heat pump with a thermal
| energy storage system. Not sure how they do this, but I
| imagine there is some sort of insulated cinder blocks on
| a secondary loop that shuttles heat/cold to where it
| needs to go.
|
| (1) https://stash.energy/en/product/
| folmar wrote:
| They try very hard not to be specific, but the industrial
| heat accumulators are usually just water.
| OJFord wrote:
| I know. It's only >100% 'efficient' if you ignore the
| input of 'outside heat'. That is not a normal
| calculation, and not really called 'efficiency'.
|
| It's desirable for multiple reasons, of course, but it's
| not efficiency.
| pmoleri wrote:
| Unfortunately by that metric other electrical heaters
| tend to 0% efficiency because they are not making use of
| the virtually unlimited energy outside the buildings.
|
| The 400% metric let's you compare with other heaters, the
| 100% is kind of useless.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| RTGs have been around since the 50's and 60's:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
| For example Russia used them to power lighthouses in super
| remote parts of their coast. Space probes, mars rovers, etc.
| use them too.
| fortran77 wrote:
| You can buy radioactive exit signs.
|
| https://www.emergencylights.net/collections/self-
| luminous?gc...
|
| They aren't generating electricity though.
| krisoft wrote:
| Absolutely. And not without incidents:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident
|
| Short summary: Soviet engineers installed RTG powered radio
| relays to support the construction of a damn in Georgia.
| Political instability lead to the abandonment of the RTGs.
| Someone scavenged the generators and removed the radioactive
| cores from them.
|
| Two of the radioactive sources were discovered by men
| gathering firewood in the forest. They decided to bring them
| to their camp(!) and cozy up to them to keep warm during the
| night(!!). Despite showing symptoms of radiation poisoning
| they kept the cores on their person while loading their
| truck(!!!). They all suffered terrible radiation injuries.
|
| There are more sources "lost" from the same batch which
| remains unaccounted for to this day.
| masklinn wrote:
| Yeah the URSS made routine use of RTGs throughout their
| territory (pretty logically as it's so vast and low-density
| electrification can't reach everywhere), and those
| routinely got misplaced. Things got worse after the fall of
| the URSS too e.g. a helo dropped two RTGs from 50m while
| airlifting them in 2004.
| petre wrote:
| Yes, there's a Russian movie with a guy that is guarding a
| weather station in the North and playing games all day. He
| somehow gets into a conflict with his supervisor,
| dissasembles a RTG beacon and uses the Strontium 90 to poison
| his supervisor's dried fish supply. They both get irradiated
| and the military cleans up the mess.
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1588875/
|
| Only the Soviets were daft enough to build RTGs using
| Strontium 90.
| philipkglass wrote:
| _Only the Soviets were daft enough to build RTGs using
| Strontium 90._
|
| The United States did too.
|
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory technical report
| "Strontium-90 Heat Sources"
|
| https://technicalreports.ornl.gov/1971/3445605716035.pdf
|
| _Introduction_
|
| _Compact electrical generators powered by heat from
| radioisotopes have been under development in the United
| States since the early 1950s for space, marine, and
| terrestrial uses. Essentially all the generators developed
| for marine and terrestrial uses have been powered by 90 Sr.
| This report summarizes the development work done by Oak
| Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Hanford Atomic Products
| Operation, and Martin Company, Nuclear Division, which led
| to the production of 90 Sr heat sources for use in the
| generators._
|
| It was a natural choice since strontium 90 is an inevitable
| byproduct of operating any fission reactor, and was readily
| available as a coproduct from weapons plutonium production
| reactors. Making better RTG isotopes like plutonium 238
| required additional infrastructure.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Only the Soviets were daft enough to build RTGs using
| Strontium 90.
|
| I mean, Sr90 is super cheap, and as long as it stays inside
| the RTG you're fine. The AEC actually tried Polonium RTGs
| in the late 50s.
|
| The shorter half-life of Sr compared to Pu also means it's
| a bit less of an issue when you lose the source.
| amelius wrote:
| Nice in theory but what if they fall into the wrong hands?
| zdragnar wrote:
| People are why we can't have nice things.
| Galaxeblaffer wrote:
| It's already in the wrong hands
| spacephysics wrote:
| I saw a video about a recent advancement in nuclear diamond
| batteries. Basically look like normal AA batteries but used
| depleted uranium and lab diamonds to make them save and long
| lasting
| duffyjp wrote:
| A phone I never have to charge would be rad.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| Sadly like most similar nuclear powered energy sources this
| is very low density, and provides very little power,
| despite lasting a long time. Think microwatts.
|
| Only really viable in deployments that need very little
| power, where no other energy harvesting method is
| available, and periodically changing out batteries is not
| an option.
| atemerev wrote:
| RTGs can't do that. Compact nuclear reactors, however, can.
|
| The problem is that a nuclear reactor is a dynamic system, with
| some moving parts. It requires thermal management. It requires
| dynamic control. It is really hard to design a fully self-
| contained nuclear power system which wouldn't require any human
| intervention to operate.
|
| And even if we could, there is also a problem of waste
| management. Nuclear waste is not too dangerous, if you don't
| touch it. It is, however, quite dangerous, if you grind it into
| fine particles and spray a large city with it by a crop duster.
| Our world is crazy. There are people like that out there, who
| might be interested in it. It is relatively hard to obtain hot
| nuclear waste from centralized large power plants. It will be
| really easy in the case of small building-scale reactors.
| bell-cot wrote:
| The headline situation obviously needs an entry or two in the "If
| I Was An Evil Overlord" List.
|
| Best that you not discover that little detail when you're trying
| to "seal the deal" with an ultra-powerful Eldritch Abomination,
| which you summoned from Far Beyond Mortal Realms, and are pulling
| the still-beating heart from your live human sacrifice for that
| _kinda_ -critical part of the Horrific Ritual.
|
| And it's clearly a detail which any Faithful Lieutenant should
| check when "procuring" sacrifice victims. And yet another reason
| for any survival-oriented members of the Evil Overlord's Legions
| of Terror to request postings in distant and sleepy bits of the
| EO's Empire - far from the glory and promotion opportunities...
| tetsusaiga wrote:
| I had no idea nuclear power had been miniaturized to this extent,
| wow.
| OJFord wrote:
| AIUI there's not really anything to miniaturise beyond the rest
| of the pacemaker (i.e. ignoring how it's powered) - there's no
| 'control' or addition of material as in a big nuclear power
| station, it's 'just' a decaying radioactive material -> heat ->
| electricity (the inverse of Peltier effect heating, and
| presumably just as inefficient (~30%?)).
| mullen wrote:
| Why not just draw heat from the person and convert it to
| electricity?
| jadt wrote:
| Looks like there has been research done on that topic[1].
|
| [1]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146093/
| palmtree3000 wrote:
| You need a heat difference, not just heat, to generate
| electricity.
|
| Now my sibling comment links to a paper where they say they
| can find heat differences in the body that are sufficient
| for their needs, so this is still a possibility! But it
| does mean you need to be somewhere with a heat gradient:
| the paper mentions just under the skin.
| Linda703 wrote:
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| Err... could you make a nuclear reactor with the plutonium in
| your backyard?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
| blossomsflorals wrote:
| Bakary wrote:
| Tragically relevant story to accompany this article: the Goiania
| accident.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
| xtracto wrote:
| Ooh, the Cobalt-60 incident in Mexico is also pretty crazy:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez_cobalt-60_c...
|
| There were _houses_ built of contaminated rebar! The story gets
| crazier the more you read about it.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| It seems like an amazing coincidence that they were able to
| work out so much about how this happened. It makes you wonder
| how often this happens and noone finds out.
| clucas wrote:
| Nah, I think it would be more surprising if you _couldn 't_
| track this stuff down. In the industrial and construction
| world, everything works off of POs and work orders. When a
| company buys or sells anything, there's almost always a
| paper trail, and usually some internal records showing what
| material went where. If you have the money to spend on the
| investigation (and an easy-to-detect signature in the
| material itself, like radioactivity) you can probably trace
| contamination all the way back to the hole in the ground it
| came out of.
| reaperducer wrote:
| There are people in America who live in houses built out of
| radioactive uranium mine tailings.
|
| https://navajotimes.com/reznews/grand-canyon-gateway-
| chapter...
|
| They've been begging the EPA for help for decades.
| joezydeco wrote:
| It was a thing in the US too. My favorite coffee shop in the
| suburbs of Chicago got a shipment of tables that had
| contaminated metal from this incident.
|
| https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/04/02/Radioactive-
| tables-r...
| xtracto wrote:
| Yes! apparently the only reason why this thing was
| discovered and talked about was because a trailer taking
| contaminated rebar to the US passed near a military airbase
| that had reactive material detector and detected the
| contaminated material. Then the US blew the whistle and
| pushed Mexico to do a proper investigation.
|
| Otherwise, Mexico (my country) being Mexico, I am sure
| nobody would have known anything about it. Specially during
| that time when we had a "soft dictatorship" that buried all
| bad things under the ground (not that nowadays is that much
| different...)
|
| Anyway, thanks for the read, I have always found very
| interesting to know the extent of the contamination.
| corpMaverick wrote:
| My father built our house in Chihuahua city around 1985. We
| lived in that house for 25 years. I never thought about it
| until we had a case of brain cancer in the family 3 years
| ago.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| There were several incidents like this, ex. https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...
|
| A caesium-137 source from an industrial sensor has been lost
| and ended up inside a concrete wall of an apartment building;
| four people died from it.
| masklinn wrote:
| There were also several incidents from the russian army
| just up and leaving orphan sources in the wild when the
| URSS failed e.g. Lilo and Lia (both in Georgia).
|
| Lia was two RTGs, which the URSS used quite a lot, and
| which regularly got lost or into accidents e.g. two
| degraded RTGs were found in the north of russia in 2003,
| one on the Cape of Navarin and one near Kola Bay, and two
| got dropped by a helo transporting them in 2004.
|
| Though from the Plainly Difficult channel, I feel like the
| most frequent radiological accidents aren't even orphan
| sources but either misused / defective radiological devices
| (a la Therac 25), or commercial irradiation facilities
| whose opsec degrades until fatal exposure occurs after a
| jam.
| eloisius wrote:
| This also happened in Taiwan. A metalworks reused
| Cobalt-60-contaminated rebar and then hundreds of apartment
| buildings were constructed with it in the 80s. The government
| tried to find and buy them, but it seems that some people
| didn't want to sell because of the amount offered. There are
| still some of them around.
| dqpb wrote:
| > stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city
|
| Is it "stealing" if it's abandoned?
| lIl-IIIl wrote:
| There was a security guard guarding the site, and the site
| was broken into on the day the guard didn't show up for work.
| dqpb wrote:
| Ok, that does sound like stealing
| baud147258 wrote:
| Abandoned means at the time not in use, not that it's not
| owned by anyone.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| I think putting it this way absolves the Brazilian government
| too much. What happened is 100% their fault.
|
| The hospital moved to a new site but as there was
| disagreement with their previous landlord they were prevented
| to move equipments by the police despite trying to secure the
| source which was later stolen and having repeatedly warned of
| its danger.
| gambiting wrote:
| Yes.
| zxexz wrote:
| I would probably have used the word "scrapped".
|
| This whole thing was a complete failure of bureaucracy from
| that start and the only entities that deserve any blame are
| those responsible for leaving nuclear waste in an abandoned
| facility after being told about it.
| saalweachter wrote:
| It's the scary goldilocks of nuclear waste.
|
| On the one extreme, you have the Elephant Foot at Chernobyl,
| which even today will kill you if you, like, go up and lick it.
| But it's not going to sneak up behind you, so just don't go
| over there.
|
| On the other extreme you have the release of radioactive water
| from Fukushima, which instantly dilutes to nothing in the
| vastness of the ocean. Meh.
|
| In the middle, you have radiation sources like this, which are
| small enough to be unnoticed and highly mobile, but clumpy
| enough to still kill you dead if you get too close. Unless you
| have a radiation detector, you could step on one on your way
| home today and never know it.
|
| Scary!
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| There's another scary Goldilocks aspect too, which is what I
| thought your comment was going to be about when I started
| reading it.
|
| Stuff with a really short half life is horribly radioactive,
| but not for long. Stuff with a half life of millions of years
| sticks around forever, but it's not throwing off that much
| radiation. But stuff in the middle (a half life of perhaps
| decades to a thousand years) can be very dangerous and remain
| that way for a long time.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > and never know it.
|
| Nah... You will know it quite soon.
| ssizn wrote:
| Well, tragic... we are talking scavengers here.
| foobiekr wrote:
| The kids weren't scavengers.
|
| There are so many things we could have if we actually could
| somehow have faith that the required (for safety, pollution
| mitigation, etc.) full lifecycle was actually honored.
|
| Instead, everything is dominated by lazy jerks. The other
| day, I noticed my neighbor's house painter digging a hole. I
| said hello and asked what was up, and he said "Yes, I need to
| dispose of the water and paint from my sprayer, so I dig
| holes and pour it in. Don't worry, I will fill the hole back
| in when I'm done." This was in the bay area.
|
| People just will not do the right thing by default if it is
| even remotely more work and for most people, thought is the
| hardest work there is.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| What's the recommended method of disposing of paint waste
| water in the Bay Area?
|
| I'd assume soil sequestration (we're not talking lead paint
| here, presumably) is preferable to storm drain dilution?
| mh- wrote:
| https://sfenvironment.org/article/household-hazardous-
| waste-...
|
| Paint is explicitly mentioned. SF even has free home
| pickup for it via Recology.
|
| https://sfenvironment.org/safe-disposal
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Is that for all paint? It looks like they only offer
| pickup for oil-based paints, and latex/acrylic-based
| should drop off:
| https://sfrecycles.org/items?words=paint&address=all
|
| I was curious, because I know SF has a high enough
| population:water ratio that stricter treatment is
| required, but on the other hand modern non-oil paints are
| relatively chemically safe (at worst, probably the off-
| gasing parts).
| mh- wrote:
| Not sure. I don't live in the city anymore but your
| comment made me realize I didn't know either.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "People just will not do the right thing by default if it
| is even remotely more work and for most people, thought is
| the hardest work there is. "
|
| My theory is simply low education.
|
| Since aeons we burried our garbage and it was never a
| problem. It only started quite recently, that our
| technology is so advanced, that it simply will not
| decompose. But rather contaminate.
|
| But only a very low percentage of people actualy
| understands this.
|
| So sure, that painter surely was "educated" at some point,
| that doing this is bad. But they simply do not believe it.
| "Not a big deal, you know". Same with plastic bags, same
| with climate change.
|
| Maybe we should start proper science education a lot
| earlier?
| triceratops wrote:
| Should've reported him.
| jcoder wrote:
| Is something less tragic if the victims weren't fully
| participating in capitalism at the time of injury? If they're
| performing a societal function that you obviously think is
| beneath you?
| kergonath wrote:
| Yeah, tragic. They are no less human than you are. They had
| no clue what they were doing, like all of us in general. What
| fraction of the population is aware of the effect of
| radiation and the toxicity of medical sources? How would they
| go about assessing the risk in this situation?
|
| Uncontrolled contamination can also harm innocent bystanders,
| in this case children.
| ssizn wrote:
| I know not to barge into buildings to steal stuff that
| doesn't belong to me and that I know nothing about.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| That's right, and it's illegal for rich and poor alike.
| That's how you know it's fair.
| justusthane wrote:
| That is an extremely cavalier take, especially considering:
|
| > His six-year-old daughter, Leide das Neves Ferreira, later
| ate an egg while sitting on this floor. She was also
| fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, applying it to her
| body and showing it off to her mother. Dust from the powder
| fell on the egg she was consuming; she eventually absorbed
| 1.0 GBq and received a total dose of 6.0 Gy, more than a
| fatal dose even with treatment.
|
| Maybe read the article before commenting?
| ssizn wrote:
| Oh I read it.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Maybe so, and I admire the modesty of your proposal, but it's
| just not safe to eat the children of poor people if they're
| radioactive, you know.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| Are poor people really humans ?
| toss1 wrote:
| Right, they are so poor that they are using their what little
| knowledge they have to scavenge an abandoned building for
| scrap they can sell to feed themselves and their children.
|
| If you had never been taught about radiation, you wouldn't
| know what to do about it either. It is not like radioactive
| materials are a common everyday occurrence for everyone.
|
| What is wrong with you that you cannot see that they are also
| humans just like us, and were born into horrible
| circumstances that they never got the education to learn
| about this, through no fault of their own whatsoever?
| Bakary wrote:
| I know that low-empathy privileged commenters are to be
| expected on HN, but I nonetheless find it impressive that
| such a short comment can illuminate so many biases in one go.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Flip take : using social media to feign empathy for
| abstract contexts - ones that you actually have zero
| emotional connection to - is merely how left leaning people
| signal their bona fides.
| Bakary wrote:
| I hear what you're saying but it's helpful to look at
| this with an additional layer of abstraction.
|
| This is not just virtue-signaling in combat with
| edginess-signaling for their respective audience. It's
| more importantly a testament to prevailing sub-ideologies
| within portions of the population.
|
| Edgy comments in tech forums like these are a signal of
| larger-scale class warfare (a loaded term, but bear with
| me). White collar techworkers think nothing of building
| skinner boxes and ad services all day as they are
| rewarded handsomely for it. In combination with all sorts
| of other factors, you end up with worsening social
| conditions across the board.
|
| Some guy being nonchalant about dead Brazilian families
| and taking pleasure in signaling it is just a
| manifestation of overall societal nonchalance about
| rights and negative externalities among high-skilled
| workers and capital owners. These are real phenomenons
| that have consequences regardless of whether I myself
| might virtue signal about rejecting them.
| prennert wrote:
| (do not autoclave)
| gilleain wrote:
| Do not stare into laser with remaining eye
| fallingfrog wrote:
| If you have one of those, are you then a nuclear cyborg? Because
| that's kind of awesome.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Has anyone found the peak power output from the thermocouples,
| for this pacemaker?
| sgustard wrote:
| Properly disposing of an EXIT sign is no picnic either.
|
| https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/f...
| darwingr wrote:
| Could I use it to power my iPhone? Frankly I'm fed up with the
| need for charging.
| jjk166 wrote:
| For actual power, no it would be wildly impractical. However
| there is a concept of a nuclear top-off battery which keeps
| your main chemical battery from draining during long periods
| when not it use. So you could throw a charged phone in a drawer
| and come back months or years later and it's still good to go.
| Good for applications like an emergency kit.
| hwillis wrote:
| It would take about 50,000 hours (5.7 years) to charge a 10 Wh
| iPhone. A solar cell on the back of the iphone would take
| roughly a full sunny day to charge an iPhone, with ~2 watts
| peak output.
| dale_glass wrote:
| No. It lasts years because pacemakers have a really tiny power
| draw.
|
| There's not a miniature nuclear reactor in there, it's just a
| RTG, which is simple but also very inefficient. So it doesn't
| get the crazy amount of power from a tiny amount of material a
| fission reactor does.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _There 's not a miniature nuclear reactor in there, it's
| just a RTG,_
|
| I believe these are not RTGs (radioisotope _thermo_ electric
| generators.) Rather they use radiovoltaic conversion,
| probably alphavoltaic conversion judging by the use of
| Pu-238. Such devices convert alpha or beta radiation directly
| to electricity using semiconductors, not unlike photovoltaic
| cells.
|
| But your point still holds, these atomic batteries produce a
| tiny amount of power.
| julianlam wrote:
| Probably, given the right modifications.
|
| However I do not trust the public to dispose of recyclable
| waste properly, let alone radioactive devices.
| adultSwim wrote:
| What happens when someone is cremated with one of these still
| installed?
| na85 wrote:
| Standard practice is to remove pacemakers. If you don't:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279940/
| bt1a wrote:
| I feel like this PSA would be best suited for a different type of
| hackers
| kurupt213 wrote:
| It's always the seemingly normal people with the weird hobbies
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| If it is a dead body and it is being cremated you take it out so
| it doesn't explode in the crematorium. I say this as a former
| funeral director who had to remove them.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| >Pacemaker explosions in crematoria: problems and possible
| solutions
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279940/
| inciampati wrote:
| Fascinating read and a lovely example of a simple and
| pragmatic socioscientific study. Cool!
| masklinn wrote:
| I assume it's mostly an issue with the li-ion battery
| pacemakers? Plutonium wouldn't explode, though the casing may
| crack which would be less than ideal.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Was just coming here to ask this - thanks for the info!
| alasdair_ wrote:
| "It was the day my grandmother exploded."
|
| Thus begins one of my favorite Ian Banks novels, starting with
| exactly this event.
| mabbo wrote:
| HackerNews truly does pull from a large swatch of interesting
| people, doesn't it?
| kierkegaard_s wrote:
| boiling it down, what would you say is the link between most
| common HNers?
| MKais wrote:
| Curiosity.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| Internet access.
| incognition wrote:
| Reductio ad absurdum
| ricardo81 wrote:
| 'what if'
| hathawsh wrote:
| Even if HN mostly consists of people engaged in building or
| maintaining technology, technology is in every industry, so
| the discussion can credibly touch nearly every topic with
| some interesting depth.
| callalex wrote:
| Taking the question literally? People who believe democracy
| makes correct choices.
| barrysteve wrote:
| Desire for quality news
| elromulous wrote:
| Nit: the idiom is "large swath"
| elliekelly wrote:
| I'm curious whether it was standard practice for you to check
| for a pacemaker prior to cremation or whether the process
| relied on a family member informing you?
| lucakiebel wrote:
| The doctors that sign off the cremation have to provide info
| on pacemakers/artificial joints and so on to the crematorium
| landofredwater wrote:
| > artificial joints
|
| Would you have to remove the joints as well then? How are
| you meant to properly dispose of something like a knee or a
| hip?
| lucakiebel wrote:
| Make it a modern art piece? Titanium hips look pretty
| dope
| lucakiebel wrote:
| But, for real, there's companies that recycle artificial
| joints.
| jrockway wrote:
| Autoclave and sell for scrap?
| klyrs wrote:
| Vaguely related, the crematorium stole my grandpa's gold
| fillings, much to my grandmother's dismay.
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