[HN Gopher] Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive c...
___________________________________________________________________
Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller
than a penny
Author : latchkey
Score : 133 points
Date : 2023-01-28 18:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| apatheticonion wrote:
| Related but off topic question. Why isn't radiation used for food
| preservation?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Curious. I would expect something that seems so threatening, has
| such a tiny effect on the environment that it can't even be
| detected. Something not adding up.
| phyzome wrote:
| This is the nature of highly radioactive materials. Walk past
| it? No problem. Walk on the crushed capsule, brush your hand
| against the bottom of your shoe, eat a sandwich? Die horribly.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Hyperbole. "the equivalent of 10 X-rays in
| an hour"
|
| So no, walk on it and you would never know. Nobody dies, not
| without carrying it around for days. Then they get burns.
|
| It's important to understand the numbers - and the magnitude
| of this radiation source is concerning but not dire.
| colanderman wrote:
| > crushed capsule
|
| is key here -- leading to ingestion, which is much more
| dangerous than brief proximity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Committed_dose#Physical_factor...
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| "An hour of exposure at about a meter away is the
| equivalent of having 10 X-rays, and prolonged contact can
| cause skin burns, acute radiation sickness and cancer, they
| said."
|
| Ingesting is of course a completely different story and
| will indeed kill you horribly.
| Ankaios wrote:
| If you dropped a Cs-137 source of this scale way out in the
| middle of nowhere, far away from any road or crops, it might
| not be a big deal. The half life is only 30 years, and it could
| get buried under soil or in silt. However, losing it near
| civilization isn't good. (Even sparsely settled areas.) It's a
| shiny metal object, and if it's in a gas station, hotel, or
| restaurant parking lot, some kid could easily find it. Plus,
| gamma sources are relatively easy to detect, which should help
| the search.
|
| If the military lost a hand grenade on a similar road trip, I'm
| sure people would want to find it, and this source is at least
| as dangerous.
| genmon wrote:
| Because it's enormously dangerous to stand a meter from, and
| people near it won't even know (eg it could have been picked up
| in a tyre tread so someone is carrying it around), but
| radiation and therefore ability detect drops according to the
| inverse square law so it will be hard to find from much further
| away. And Australia is big.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Again, hyperbole. "the equivalent of 10
| X-rays in an hour"
|
| People routinely get exposed to that during their normal job.
| An x-ray is a fraction of a year's natural exposure from the
| sun. Airline pilots experience this radiation in a few months
| at work.
|
| The numbers matter. This instance, the device hardly matters.
| Not as much as a national news report anyway. We'd be better
| off reading about pay disparity or access to health care.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| > People routinely get exposed to that during their normal
| job.
|
| What jobs you're referring to? Your examples cite years and
| months but the quoted sentence states "in an hour."
| testplzignore wrote:
| To back up your point: If "X-ray" is a chest x-ray, then
| per https://xkcd.com/radiation/ this would be equivalent to
| one-tenth of a head CT scan, which are routinely done
| without consideration to any increased risk of cancer.
|
| If the goal is to minimize loss of life, I think there are
| far better things that time could be spent on than looking
| for this thing. People are bad at thinking about
| opportunity cost.
| roywiggins wrote:
| It's all sort-of fine until someone brings it home and
| sticks it on a shelf and thereby kills their entire family.
| Walking around with this in your pocket will kill you
| eventually.
|
| This sort of thing has happened before with loose
| radioactive sources.
| throwanem wrote:
| Cs-137 is dangerous to animals (including humans) in close
| proximity, precisely because of the gamma radiation it emits.
| But, like any radiative emission, the power density drops off
| with the inverse square of distance from the source, which
| makes it detectable well beyond any range at which it poses a
| hazard. Think of stadium lights: if you stand five feet in
| front of one, it will blind you, while from a mile away, it's
| harmless but you still can see it. With gamma radiation you
| need a detector (ie a Geiger counter), and with an at the
| moment presumably unshielded Cs-137 source, a reasonably
| sensitive detector will indeed pick it up at some distance. So,
| at worst, if you put enough people in trucks with Geiger
| counters along the same route the original truck followed,
| sooner or later you will find the lost source.
|
| That said, this method while effective may take some time, and
| the major concern here may not be so much the direct radiation
| emission from the intact source, as the possibility of damage
| leading to dispersal of its contents. In the Goiania incident
| of 1987 [1], scrappers removed a Cs-137 source from an
| improperly decommissioned radiotherapy machine and broke it
| open, dispersing the loose isotope material it contained in
| ignorance of the danger it posed. Several people died, others
| were badly injured, and at least one house and a lot of soil
| had to be removed for disposal. If this lost Australian source
| is similar in design to that one, warning people about it while
| looking for it is an eminently sensible public safety measure.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiania_accident
| throwaway89201 wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Not my question at all.
|
| How can it be so deadly/radioactive, yet so hard to detect?
|
| Further, asking questions is indeed the point of these
| discussions. Re-reading the standards I see no prohibition.
|
| And reading that reference article, the loss it cites was
| 19Tb (19 trillion bequerels). This lost capsule in Australia
| contains less than 100. So around what? 10 billion times less
| dangerous?
|
| Thanks for the reference material, now I'm more sure than
| ever that this article is some kind of clickbait about a
| fairly miniscule risk being trumpeted as a national incident.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think it's more about a failure of process than this
| particular piece of radioactive material. Being
| proportionally cavalier about it would invite lazier
| handling. The next piece of radioactive material could be
| more dangerous. The mining company will be sent the bill
| and police get to practice a real life scenario. And
| everyone knows don't do that again.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > How can it be so deadly/radioactive, yet so hard to
| detect?
|
| First, it's important to keep in mind that there are
| different forms of radiation: ionizing[1] which is
| dangerous and non-ionizing which is not typically
| dangerous[2]. Furthermore, ionizing radiation consists of
| three types, alpha, beta and gamma which have different
| properties and thus dangerous in different ways and
| amounts.
|
| The source in question contained cesium-137, which decays
| almost entirely (95%) by emitting beta particles. The beta
| particles are stopped by about 1 meter of air[3], but can
| do significant damage to living cells if nearby.
|
| Thus, trying to detect it is a bit like trying to see a
| bright flashlight in a fog. Even though it's bright you
| won't see it until you're really close.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_particle
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> You are only asking questions, I understand. Please don't
| do that here [1]._
|
| Where in the HN rules is it forbidding to ask questions?
| gnad_sucks wrote:
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like.
|
| I think he's referring to this. Indeed, there's nothing
| wrong with asking questions. I imagine that "you're only
| asking questions" is a reference to an usual technique of
| conspiracy theorists of pretending they're just asking
| questions to defend against being called out on baseless
| accusations. "Are they putting something in the water
| that's making the frogs gay? I'm just asking questions".
|
| We don't know the intent here, but I agree with him that
| "something doesn't add up" _could_ be an insinuation of
| conspiracy theory, and so against the guidelines.
| 13of40 wrote:
| I read that as "don't accuse other HN users of being
| shills" not "you can't say this news article seems a
| little suspect".
| gnad_sucks wrote:
| I agree the two are different in some respects; at the
| same time I think the idea that baseless insinuations
| undermine the conversation works just as well towards
| news articles as towards HN users.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| That rule bans exactly what he's doing, accusing people
| of "just asking questions" in the derogatory sense.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I'm amazed at the gymnastics possible with such an
| innocuous phrase. It is almost perverse. Imagine trying
| to parse this out starting from a position of good faith.
| gnad_sucks wrote:
| You think I'm not in good faith - that's fine.
|
| But surely you have to concede that "I'm just asking
| questions" make it really easy to insinuate without
| directly stating, yes?
| [deleted]
| galleywest200 wrote:
| This also happened in Ukraine. The capsule was lost in a gravel
| pit and ended up being built into the wall of an apartment and
| several people died as a result.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Not really a regionally significant nuclear accident then.
| About the same as a gas leak?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| A gas leak will either blow you up or kills you quicker and
| can be identified and fixed quickly but radiation kills you
| slowly, making identification of the cause very tricky for
| authorities.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Remember this? 8 deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa
| n_Bruno_pipeline_explosion
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Or you end up raising a family of mutants.
| dehrmann wrote:
| /goes to eat a Rio Red grapefruit.
| aqme28 wrote:
| "A few people here may die" is a relatively serious nuclear
| accident. Worse than three-mile island at least.
| [deleted]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I don't disagree. But I wonder if the cost to recovering
| this pellet would save more lives spent in another way.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| A few grand to dig it out of a wall? A few hundo to slap
| some lead shielding over it (it is an X-ray source after
| all)?
|
| In any case the primary expense is going to be one of
| paying off all the people to get the right approvals.
| Crunching the numbers on how to safely rectify it and
| actually going through those actions will be dirt cheap
| compared to getting someone with the "right credentials"
| to tell the government, the insurers and whoever else
| that your obvious solution any highschooler can crunch
| the numbers on is in fact acceptable
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think finding it is the expensive part.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| It pretty much broadcasts its location if you wave the
| right instrumentation around.
| Symbiote wrote:
| You "just" need to wave that instrument over 1400km of
| highway, potentially with a 100m+ width if the capsule
| has been kicked some distance away by a truck tyre.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| I was talking about the "gets concreted into a wall"
| case.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm trying to imagine the scale of this. I guess it
| depends on how close you have to be to pick up the
| signal. And how many false signals there might be.
| sebastien_b wrote:
| Did you work at Ford as an executive during the Pinto
| era?
| mc32 wrote:
| It seems the pinto narrative was framed in way to make it
| look worse but compared to other cars of similar type it
| wasn't all that bad[1]. This exaggerated narrative
| despite vindicating data is perpetuated in biz ethics.
|
| [1] https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2017/10/17/misunders
| tood-ca...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Yup. The lesson to be learned once you dig into it is "if
| you're doing some industry standard thing that someone
| could ever potentially portray as seedy definitely don't
| document it".
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I insist they are safe at any speed so long as you keep
| their gas tanks empty!
| throwanem wrote:
| Not to rehash my other comment, but depending on the nature
| of the source it might become regionally significant if
| somebody screws up bad enough.
| barbazoo wrote:
| It's gonna be in the last place they look.
| euroderf wrote:
| (*) by definition
| dalmo3 wrote:
| Nice try, but I've looked inside yesterday's pants' pockets and
| it's not there.
| kbutler wrote:
| Probably not, as they will likely have multiple groups looking
| and some degree of delayed notification.
|
| Especially if they prank one group by not telling them. :-D
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Also, to avoid accidents, it's strongly advised to avoid the
| last ski run of the day.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Australia: the country where not only the wildlife but even the
| gravel on the road is out to kill you!
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Best reply on this thread.
|
| Everything in Australia kills you or at least causes horrible
| pain. Even that cute platypus or that harmless-looking shell on
| the beach.
|
| And now this.
| anakaine wrote:
| No moose, bears, wolves, cougars, or other alpha predators in
| Australia though. About the worst are wild dogs / dingos,
| though they typically won't be a problem unless they're in a
| pack.
|
| I'll take Australian dangers over North American every day of
| the week.
| bogeholm wrote:
| They do have the saltwater crocodile[0], which looks close
| to alpha. Maybe unless it encounters an orca.
|
| I bet is has a great name in Australia - any Ozzies around
| who can comment?
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_crocodile
| dragonsky wrote:
| Only if you are stupid enough to go near the water in
| areas they live.
|
| Unfortunately plenty of drunk campers have a habit of
| doing this.
| zh3 wrote:
| "Salties"
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I've been there three times. How about you?
|
| Those megafauna in North America are pretty hard for a
| human to encounter accidentally. As opposed to these:
|
| https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/201
| 3...
| rukuu001 wrote:
| Hello, Australian here.
|
| Yes, for 85% of the country, risk is small.
|
| Crocodiles are the only major danger, and they're isolated
| to the far north of the country.
|
| But they are truly terrifying, in that they are silent and
| invisible in the water, intelligent, and capable of
| watching a human for days to learn their routine and plan
| an ambush.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I was in Cairns & a little north of there for a bit.
| Certainly never went all the way to Cape York.
|
| Although I did go on a kayaking expedition to Dunk
| Island, where there were only four 2-person kayaks,
| unusually high waves, and my boat-mate asked, "Are we
| going to sink?" Obviously we didn't.
|
| Of course this is all for laughs, but some HN'ers are
| incapable of that.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| Fortunately, over 85% of us live in the cities, due to much
| of the rest of the country where most of the dangerous shit
| is being mostly uninhabitable anyway. The further south you
| live the safer you are generally speaking. Where I live (far
| south) the most dangerous creature you're going to run into
| in the city is probably a redback spider, which is related to
| a black widow, and there hasn't been a confirmed death from
| one of those in over 40 years. Or a brown snake, but I don't
| think I've even seen one in the wild, although I know an area
| close by where they are reported to live.
|
| This capsule has been lost in one of the most remote,
| uninhabitated parts of the country.
|
| The dangers of living in Australia are vastly overblown ...
| perihelions wrote:
| Some relevant-looking thing I found on Google:
|
| - _" 9. SEARCHING FOR RADIOACTIVE OBJECTS"_
|
| - _" The first part of this section describes three different
| airborne surveys that successfully located lost radioactive
| sources. The three incidents were quite different in nature and
| provide useful information should similar accidents occur in the
| future. Section 9 concludes with a discussion showing how to
| estimate the count rate which would be observed by AGRS from a
| radioactive source. These results can be used to plan searches
| for lost radioactive sources."_
|
| - _" 9.1. RECOVERY OF A LOST 60CO SOURCE"_
|
| - _" 9.2. LOCATING THE LOST ATHENA MISSILE"_
|
| - _" 9.3. COSMOS-954 INCIDENT"_
|
| https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... (
| _" Airborne Gamma Ray Spectrometer Surveying_", 1991)
|
| Their first incident is basically identical to this one:
|
| - _" On 21 June 1968, a 325 mCi 60Co source3 was lost in transit
| somewhere between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Kansas City,
| Missouri, a distance of 1800 km._"
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > 9.2. LOCATING THE LOST ATHENA MISSILE"
|
| Where can I read more about this? How does one lose a missile?
| lantry wrote:
| A test fire went way off course
|
| https://wsmrmuseum.com/2021/11/10/in-1970-an-athena-
| missile-...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| epaulson wrote:
| The article didn't really explain the original purpose of the
| now-missing capsule, other than it was part of a sensor used in a
| mine. Can anyone explain a bit more what the original purpose of
| the sensor it was part of was? What did the mine need a bit of
| radiation to measure?
| seized wrote:
| Not sure if the mine in question does this, but there are X-Ray
| sensors that can go on the excavator buckets to measure ore
| content on each scoop. I'm sure there are other methods eg on
| conveyors as well.
| martyvis wrote:
| We used radiation sources and detectors at the steelworks for
| thickness gauge - you set them on either side of the plate and
| measure the lost and from that calculate the steel thickness
| very accurately. I presume in a mine it could be used say on a
| conveyor belt where you measure the lost radiation to help
| determine the density or weight of the ore.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| That's just an xray with a single pixel
| EGreg wrote:
| Come on, what are the chances people will spend 10 minutes next
| to the thing? It will just be lying out in the desert somewhere,
| and maybe some animals might wander by for 2 minutes.
|
| Of course, on the off chance someone does find it and pick it up,
| and then bring it into a town, etc. it can be bad. But I thought
| that, in Australia, most of that desert road is basically
| desolate for decades, except for cars coming by occasionally.
| Perhaps when they do road work, however...
| BetterGeiger wrote:
| Radiation detection is my specialty. This source is Cs-137, few
| hundred mCi. It's easy to detect within a few seconds at
| distances of a few tens of meters or more with professional
| detection equipment if there is direct line of sight.
|
| If it was knocked off the road, though, the question will be if
| it fell into a crack or other such place because then the
| radiation is somewhat shielded and it would take much more
| measuring time to identify it.
|
| I suspect if a few passes with vehicle-mounted detectors don't
| find it then some drones with detectors traveling along the sides
| of the road would be a good next step. If a critter moved it or
| ate it then it's probably gone forever. At a distance of 1 meter
| the dose rate from that source is already not extremely hazardous
| unless a person were exposed for an extended period of time (like
| a full day or two). Getting closer, like putting it directly
| against your torso, would mean serious health effects in a matter
| of minutes.
| sn9 wrote:
| This is an interesting algorithm problem.
|
| Given the parameters to maximize detection and minimize
| time/resources, how would you direct a drone or something to
| find the capsule?
|
| How would that change with 2 drones? 4? 8? As many drones as
| there are flyable Geiger counters in the country?
| pxmpxm wrote:
| User name checks out ...
| simple10 wrote:
| Adafruit sells a geiger counter kit. It's been on my list of
| things to tinker with for scanning living and work environments
| for potential hazards. Just for fun. I'm curious if anyone here
| has ever found high levels of radiation while playing around with
| geiger counters?
|
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/483
| donatj wrote:
| I have had an old Geiger counter in my office for a number of
| years my dad gave me he got in a crate of junk he purchased.
| Best I can tell it doesn't work, I've tried bananas and the
| like. I've always had a mild fear that the thing itself might
| be radioactive.
| mkl wrote:
| _People_ are more radioactive than bananas [1], so that 's
| probably not too surprising. DrAwdeOccarim's sibling comment
| to yours mentions you can buy rocks to test with.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/how-many-bananas-
| would-...
| DrAwdeOccarim wrote:
| I have one, it works, but I really want to connect it to a pi
| for data logging and visualization but I don't have the time to
| code it up. If you go down this road, please let me know if you
| wind up finding a good open source project for managing the
| data! You can purchase rocks off ebay that have some
| radioactivity, which I use to show my kids how radiation works
| much to the chagrin of my spouse : )
| fnands wrote:
| Oh, reminds me a of a time some students lost a Polonium source
| in the physics lab while I was a Masters student. The HoD had
| them crawling around the building for days with a Geiger counter,
| but they never found it.
|
| Luckily it was a small source and Polonium has a relatively short
| half-life, but the department had to go through a whole song and
| dance of declaring an incident.
| todd8 wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, Polonium is 5000 times more radioactive
| than Radium (just 0.001g of Po emits the same number of
| particles as 5g of Ra).
|
| It has a half life of just 138 days so in only 4.6 years the
| missing Polonium will be equivalent in radioactivity to Radium,
| which is known to cause cancer. This doesn't sound like
| something that should be treated lightly.
| agoose77 wrote:
| The important question is how much of a sample was lost.
| Ultimately, AIUI, the health risk depends upon the exposure
| in a ~ linear fashion. At least, in radiological protection
| that's used. The LNT model errs on the side of caution;
| assume that _any_ exposure is harmful, linearly extrapolating
| from the high dosages seen in Hiroshima, etc, where we have
| data of the impact of exposure on the body. In reality, we
| expect a threshold effect as the body is able to repair some
| damage.
|
| The dose of radiation has different meanings; absorbed,
| equivalent, effective. These are just different calculations,
| starting from how much energy the body received (absorbed),
| to taking into account the different kinds of radiation whose
| effects differ (equivalent), to where in the body the dose as
| received (different organs at different risk, effective).
|
| The half-life of 210Po is 138 days, so it's ~10x less active
| than 223Ra. That's meaningless with respect to the health
| risk, though; the activity of the sample is ultimately
| selected by its intended use. Most samples are sized
| according to the dose requirements. At least, that's my
| understanding (physics, not medical). In general we don't
| want to over-size a source as there are greater regulations.
| Similarly, we don't want sources to become useless too
| quickly.
|
| In any case, this is definitely bad -- 5000x less activity is
| not good if it's greater than the lethal dose. Because
| radioactive sources are so small, the risk is not likely to
| be distributed; you get the whole dose, or nothing.*
|
| * Unless it gets dispersed somehow.
|
| Dose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalent_dose#/media/Fi
| le:SI... LNT:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/
| fnands wrote:
| Yes, it was a tiny source, and luckily emits alpha
| particles which are easy stop by even small amounts of
| material.
|
| > * Unless it gets dispersed somehow.
|
| Exactly, the real worry was that it would get crushed and
| would be breathed in, in which case it would be a real
| problem.
|
| But even so, the school had to file a report with the
| nuclear regulator iirc. Lot of paperwork.
| cshimmin wrote:
| Sure but all that means is that 1g of radium will have the
| same activity as 0.2mg of polonium. Of course they will also
| have different decay spectra etc. We don't know how big the
| source was that the students lost, but I'm guessing that if
| they just gave up after a few days, it probably wasn't a very
| high activity. This means either very low mass, or a higher
| mass but just older so that it's decayed away.
| fnands wrote:
| It was tiny, I think something like this:
| https://www.flinnsci.com/alpha-source-polonium-210/ap8794/
|
| They were letting undergrads handle it, so definitely
| wasn't a large source.
|
| Also, hey Chase! Funny to see you in the wild (Ferdi here)
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| "Small" is likely meant relative to the material. So a
| "small" Polonium source and a "small" Radium source would
| typically refer to a Polonium source having orders of
| magnitude less material, but a similar radiation level.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I found a polonium-loaded anti-static brush for photography
| in a box from my parents' attic. Scared the shit out of me at
| first. Called the hazardous waste folks and had a fun chat
| with a perplexed employee. We finally decided that, as it was
| from the 70's, it had long since decayed into harmlessness
| and was fine to throw away.
| kibwen wrote:
| How did you realize it once contained polonium?
| el_benhameen wrote:
| It had a big label on it that said "DANGER: POLONIUM. DO
| NOT INGEST"!
| bogeholm wrote:
| A reasonable basis for the polonium hypothesis
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| If only Alexander Litvinenko had such a warning...
| beeforpork wrote:
| Applied Science youtube channel uses this and explains it a
| bit:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBHIp967TD8
| krasin wrote:
| > polonium-loaded anti-static brush for photography
|
| At first, I was very surprised to hear it's a thing, but
| apparently it is and one can buy for just $170:
|
| https://amstat.com/products/anti-static-brush-with-
| ionizing-...
| causality0 wrote:
| Sounds like either someone thought it would be cool to take it
| home or accidentally dropped it in a trash can that was taken
| out before it was missed.
| cloudking wrote:
| Interview question: can you design a system to safely locate and
| retrieve the capsule?
| DrZootron wrote:
| These systems exist. To name a couple:
|
| https://www.arktis-detectors.com/products/
|
| https://www.ansto.gov.au/products/detection-and-imaging-cori...
| cloudking wrote:
| Neat, a fleet of those drones working in coordination might
| be able locate it.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised that something this radioactive isn't
| pretty easy to hone in on with a good Geiger counter. Someone
| with better physics want to enlighten me about ranges and
| sensitivity?
| pfdietz wrote:
| You wouldn't use a Geiger counter, you'd want to use a gamma
| ray spectrometer. For example, a sodium iodide crystal doped
| with thallium (acting as a scintillator, connected to a
| photon detector) or semiconductor detector (large crystal of
| Si, Ge, or other materials, preferably of high atomic
| number.)
|
| The Geiger counter is filled with gas and will not
| effectively interact with gamma ray photons; the solid state
| detectors interact much more strongly with them, and
| (particularly the semiconductor detectors) have very good
| energy resolution, to spot the particular energy of photons
| from this particular radioisotope.
| skissane wrote:
| One of these? https://georesults.com.au/product/radiation-
| solutions-rs-125...
|
| Or maybe even
| https://georesults.com.au/product/rs-350-backpack-human-
| port...
|
| I imagine they are both rather expensive.
| car wrote:
| Radiascan makes an affordable scintillation counter, the
| RadiaCode 101.
|
| https://radiascan.com/
|
| A good intro to what it can be used for:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1UZdLVlBXg
| skissane wrote:
| Link to their actual product page:
| https://radiascan.com/products/detector-of-ionising-
| radiatio...
| remus wrote:
| I guess it's one of those things where the intensity of the
| radiation is proportional to 1/d^2.
|
| If you're holding it in your hand it emits enough radiation
| to be very unhealthy, but as soon as you put some distance
| between you and it then it becomes very hard to detect.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| That's why it's still lost. Cs-137 has a clear gamma
| emmision spectrum (which is to say it glows a unique color
| of high-energy photons), so you can scan and pick it up
| with a scintillation detector.
|
| Unfortunately, Cs-137 is one of the bits of waste generated
| as fallout from nuclear testing, and its half-life is 30
| years, so ambient levels are generally not identically
| zero.
| thomasmg wrote:
| I don't know if something like that would help, but in
| Switzerland there are annual measurement flights (with a
| helicopter): https://blog.alertswiss.ch/en/categories/focp-
| news/annual-ne...
|
| Part of this seems to be (sometimes?) to find radioactive
| sources: "The goal of this part of the exercise was to find two
| radioactive sources which, for training purposes, had been
| placed somewhere in an area of about 2,500 km2"
| dividuum wrote:
| I like how they don't mention the result of that exercise. I
| guess they didn't find it?
| [deleted]
| throwanem wrote:
| Do you want it to scale horizontally, vertically, or both?
| cloudking wrote:
| It could be stuck in a tree, so probably both.
| throwanem wrote:
| Dang it, I wish I didn't have real architecture design work
| to do today, because this seems like it'd be a lot of fun
| to research.
|
| Pure horizontal scaling would be trucks with survey
| counters. Pure vertical would be getting the US to retask
| one of those radiation-sensing satellites they use to
| characterize stuff like the Urals trace. (Not that that'd
| be likely to happen - national security, etc. But have the
| embassy in DC call NASA anyway, just in case they do have
| something.) Both would be GA aircraft doing a broad survey
| while trucks retrace the route. In any case the logistics
| would be critical, and speed as ever would be costly - good
| thing we have government-scale resources to work with.
|
| And, yes, the system in this case would be implemented on a
| human substrate, not a silicon one. This isn't Chernobyl;
| we don't _need_ robots to do this job, the problem is of
| limited enough scope to be safely handled by properly
| trained and equipped humans - finding whom would be an
| early logistical concern. (The surveyors would be safe
| enough barring a forced landing or breakdown very near the
| source, which is unlikely but we still want to get rescue
| services on standby, or hire a couple of civil helicopters
| from the oil industry or similar, for fast recovery just in
| case.) And for a one-off job like this that needs to be
| done as fast as possible, there isn 't _time_ to design,
| build, and debug robots that can do it.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Pure vertical would be getting the US to retask one
| of those radiation-sensing satellites they use to
| characterize stuff like the Urals trace."_
|
| That's an extraordinary thing to mention in passing; do
| you have a source for this?
| krisoft wrote:
| > The surveyors would be safe enough barring a forced
| landing or breakdown very near the source
|
| Weird assumption. Forced landings anywhere are unsafe.
| They are also very rare, because aircraft are quite
| reliable. The chances of the surveyors having a forced
| landing near the capsule must be minuscule (tiny danger
| zone compared to the extent of full search area, small
| probability of an aircraft having a forced landing at
| all).
|
| If you are counting such minuscule dangers then you are
| ignoring much bigger (but still relatively small) dangers
| to the surveyors: they might trip during the survey, they
| might get into a traffic accident as they search or their
| aircraft might crash injuring them (irrespective of
| distance from the source). They might have a wildlife
| encounter as they are verifying a signal (false or true
| positive). They might suffer from heat stroke, or get
| sunburnt.
|
| My intuition says that if you send out teams of people
| scurrying around the countryside these listed dangers are
| all more likely than having a forced landing right on top
| of the source. I also assume that you ignored them
| because they are all "everyday risks", and you had tunnel
| vision concentrating on the radiation hazard.
| throwanem wrote:
| Great catch, and you're right: lots of things can go
| wrong in a desert whether there's radiation involved or
| not, so we'd have needed those helicopters either way.
| This is why we work in teams - don't be shy about
| anything else you see me missing.
| krisoft wrote:
| > don't be shy about anything else you see me missing
|
| I would think we need to clarify the theoretical and
| practical limits of the detectors.
|
| Depending on how the sensors work the search might look
| very different.
|
| If you can get some expensive lab gear and distinguish
| the radiation of this source from the background from
| hundreds of kilometers then you only need to measure at a
| few strategic locations to triangulate it.
|
| If you need to get a sensor within ten meters from the
| source before it can be detected then you need to lug the
| sensor around on the ground. That would be too low for a
| manned aircraft to fly at.
|
| How fast does the sensor detect? If the sensor can detect
| up to 100 meters but need 5 second to measure that will
| make the search much different than if it can measure
| with 500hz for the same distance.
|
| Do we think we can sense only the source or also the
| places the source has been at? Does it leave a detectable
| trace?
|
| What of these is hard limit by physics (nobody, for no
| amount of money can build a better detector) vs limit of
| resources (it would be very expensive to do x)? If it is
| a limit of resources how does detector quality scales
| with resources spent?
|
| Without having solid answers to these it would be foolish
| to jump at designing a search method.
| erentz wrote:
| This is really weird. FTA: "These gauges are designed to be
| robust and to be used in industrial settings where they may be
| exposed to weather and vibration," Dr. Robertson said at a news
| conference on Saturday, "so it is unusual for a gauge to come
| apart like this one has."
|
| See also this [1] article with a picture of an example gauge.
| Again making the point that this is really weird: "Radiation
| Services WA general manager Lauren Steen said it was a "highly
| unlikely" scenario, due to the safety measures typically in place
| for the transit of radioactive materials."
|
| New material for a future Plainly Difficult episode once the
| investigation is complete.
|
| [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-28/radioactive-
| capsule-s...
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| It was probably tampered with.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Thanks. I was confused why the NYT didn't include a picture of
| it for public safety if for no other reason...
| mach1ne wrote:
| Is there any chance it was theft?
| latchkey wrote:
| https://archive.is/5uUGC
| geor9e wrote:
| In some multiverse timeline, Apple launched an iPhone with a
| geiger counter built in for this very reason. Instead of
| crowdsourced Aigtag triangulation, it triangulates these
| capsules.
| xwdv wrote:
| They should issue a nationwide announcement for people to check
| their tires for the lodged capsule.
| propter_hoc wrote:
| Really scary. For those unaware of how badly this kind of
| situation can end up, read about the horrific Goiania incident in
| Brazil.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
| fblp wrote:
| That story is crazy. Thanks for sharing!
| csdvrx wrote:
| The best part is how the person responsible for the problem
| (the director of Ipasgo) could redirect the blame to the
| owners who tried to prevent the catastrophy doing everything
| they could - he stopped them to do the right things with the
| help of cops:
|
| > Four months before the theft, on May 4, 1987, Saura
| Taniguti, then director of Ipasgo, the institute of insurance
| for civil servants, used police force to prevent one of the
| owners of IGR, Carlos Figueiredo Bezerril, from removing the
| radioactive material that had been left behind.[7] Figueiredo
| then warned the president of Ipasgo, Licio Teixeira Borges,
| that he should take responsibility "for what would happen
| with the caesium bomb".[7] The Court of Goias posted a
| security guard to protect the site.[8] Meanwhile, the owners
| of IGR wrote several letters to the National Nuclear Energy
| Commission (CNEN), warning them about the danger of keeping a
| teletherapy unit at an abandoned site, but they could not
| remove the equipment by themselves once a court order
| prevented them from doing so.[7][8]
|
| > In light of the deaths caused, the three doctors who had
| owned and operated IGR were charged with criminal negligence.
| Because the accidents occurred before the promulgation of the
| Federal Constitution of 1988 and because the substance was
| acquired by the clinic and not by the individual owners, the
| court could not declare the owners of IGR liable. One of
| IGR's owners and the clinic's physicist were ordered to pay
| R$100,000 for the derelict condition of the building. The two
| thieves were not included as defendants in the public civil
| suit.
| bonzini wrote:
| The owners also had left it there for two years. They
| weren't without blame either.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Also a close call in Mexico. In this case, they were trying to
| dispose of the source properly, but the truck was held up and
| stolen along the way:
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/12/04/248737662...
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > An estimated 300 curies of radioactive cobalt found their
| way to the two Mexican foundries, one of which manufactured
| metal table legs for shipment to the largest distributor of
| restaurant tables in the U.S., while the other produced steel
| rods used in the reinforcement of concrete building projects.
| About 600 tons of the contaminated steel were shipped to the
| U.S. from December 1983 to January 1984."
|
| How much is 300 curies?
| bonzini wrote:
| 300 Ci is 11 TBq (terabecquerel), or 11*10^12 decays per
| second. Co-60 has a half life of 166 million seconds, so it
| was 11*166*10^18/ln 2 atoms=2.6*10^21 atoms, which is 0.004
| moles (a mole is 6.02*10^23 atoms).
|
| A mole of cobalt 60 weighs 60 g, so it was a quarter of a
| gram if I did the calculations right.
|
| The ln 2 factor is because the probability of a decay
| happening in a second is ln 2 divided by the half life.
| solstice wrote:
| About 303 g according to the table in
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_(unit)
| bonzini wrote:
| 883 mg/Ci * 300 Ci is less than a gram.
| smcl wrote:
| There's a good Well There's Your Problem episode about this, if
| people would rather see a video about it:
| https://youtu.be/34rdxDgpaaA
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| sensitivefrost wrote:
| At least Western Australia is incredibly underpopulated and
| remote.
| leaving wrote:
| This is mostly a data analysis job.
|
| If the capsule is on or very near the road, a single trip from
| start to finish with a NaI(Tl) or CsI scintillation counter will
| find it. Every CBRN team in the world has these, so they have
| obviously completed the first run at this without finding it. The
| capsule is not on or near the road.
|
| Australia is famous for road trains on the Great Northen Highway.
| They travel fast and heavy on the paved road that runs through
| the outback. If the tires of one of those hit the capsule, they
| could fling it a fair distance into the desert. There's nothing
| between the road and the sandy desert to stop it.
|
| If the capsule is a fair distance off the road, the inverse
| square law is going to reduce gamma detections closer to
| background. There won't be a clear peak in the data. If the
| vehicle with the detector moves slowly, there will be a wide peak
| in the time dimension that may just look like a natural variation
| in the background. If the vehicle moves fast, it may miss the
| source completely.
|
| It will be a matter of looking at the data to try to find a
| pattern that indicates where the capsule may be. This will be
| made more difficult becuase they don't likely have a pre-capsule-
| loss run that would allow them to subtract normal variations of
| the background.
|
| Adding to the problem is the stochastic nature of radiation. It
| is entirely possible to have a significant peak in the count
| rates that is not a strong point source; just a random variation
| in the background. Lower peaks from random confluence of
| background sources are likely; higher peaks are less likely, but
| not impossible. It may require a large number of runs to
| eliminate random events.
|
| Real vehicles on real roads experience a lot of variations in
| speed, plus random starts and stops because the driver had to
| pee, or eat, or because there was a dead kangaroo on the road or
| something. A fair bit of work will need to be done to standardize
| multiple runs.
|
| This can be partly solved by using multiple detectors on the same
| vehicle, with the idea being that peaks that are the result of
| natural variations in the background should only affect one
| detector at a time--so they can be subtracted out. But, again,
| CBRN teams have enough resources that they have already done this
| and they haven't found it.
|
| So it is reasonable to conclude that the capsule is either quite
| far off the road, or has been picked up by a passing vehicle.
|
| Another possibility is that the idea that it "fell off a truck"
| is wrong and that some human grabbed it by dissasembling the
| apparatus. This could be out of curiosity, or ignorance, or a
| misguided attempt to steal the source or use it for nefarious
| purposes.
|
| If that is the case, the capsule is going to be nearly impossible
| to find unless it happens to pass a fixed gamma detector
| somewhere, such as a port.
|
| The incident is a good argument for building scintillation
| crystals into all cellphones. This would be cheap and easy. Small
| scintillators are not very sensitive, and they are not great for
| spectroscopy, but they are extremely cool, very small, don't
| interfere with the workings of the phone, and use extremely
| little power.
|
| A network of scintillators in every phone would be amazing for
| finding stuff like this.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You comment is fantastic because it demonstrates we are beyond
| finding it with a rolling road block and sensors on trucks.
| This is a recovery operation where you're going to want
| surveillance for when someone shows up somewhere (medical care
| provider) with radiation sickness and to start contact tracing.
| If a human has it in their possession, exposure is ongoing. If
| it's sitting in a ditch somewhere, maybe it's years before it's
| found, maybe it's never found (and perhaps buried if and when a
| torrential rain passes through the area, typically in the
| upcoming winter months).
| plantain wrote:
| >If the capsule is on or very near the road, a single trip from
| start to finish with a NaI(Tl) or CsI scintillation counter
| will find it. Every CBRN team in the world has these, so they
| have obviously completed the first run at this without finding
| it. The capsule is not on or near the road.
|
| It was reported in the national news within 12 hours of being
| found lost, so I don't think they had done that yet, especially
| given the distance.
| car wrote:
| _A network of scintillators in every phone would be amazing for
| finding stuff like this._
|
| That was my first thought too. Do you think it's physically
| possible to make a MEMS scintiallation device?
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| Although some weird Japanese phone makers did have
| smartphones with radiation detector built-in (SHARP 107sh and
| 205sh), I don't think it would be a popular feature.
|
| There isn't so many cases in daily life that one can
| encounter a radioactive source. Even if you are actively
| looking for one (don't do it), you will have a hard time if
| you don't work with radioactive sources occupationally.
|
| Also, it's not physically possible to create a small and yet
| sensitive radiation detector.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| No. MEMS means electromechanical, and scintillation needs
| solid state: a crystal and a photon detector of some kind.
| The crystal can't be miniaturized because there's a minimum
| thickness you need to capture the photon and Compton
| electrons*.
| pfdietz wrote:
| There are radiation detection apps for cell phones that use
| the camera. Not very sensitive, but no new hardware is
| required.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > They believe that vibrations from the truck caused the sensor
| to shake apart and also dislodged a mounting bolt, leaving a hole
| in the bottom of the box. The capsule is believed to have fallen
| out of the sensor, through the bolt-hole, onto the surface of the
| truck, and bounced off into the road.
|
| I have a bag of locking washers I would be more than happy to
| donate if it makes this kind of thing less likely to happen in
| the future. In the mean time, good luck.
| mindcrime wrote:
| For something like this, I'd think you would want some red
| Loctite as well!
|
| https://www.loctiteproducts.com/en/products/specialty-produc...
| toss1 wrote:
| These Nord-Lock washers [0] are excellent for that purpose. Do
| NOT use common split-washers, throw them away -- they can
| actually speed the unlocking & loss of a nut.
|
| (No relation, just a satisfied customer after finding they work
| well after being strongly recommended by a racecar engineer I
| know)
|
| [0] https://www.nord-lock.com/nord-lock/
| yummybear wrote:
| I really thought someone (US?) had technology (satellites) that
| could pinpoint radiation sources, even of this magnitude
| geor9e wrote:
| I had the same thought briefly, but then thought more about it.
| These are high energy particles. You might remember the article
| about cosmic rays that sometimes cause a single bit flip in a
| videogame, and that there is no easy way to shield against it.
| That makes satellite imaging difficult, because how do you
| focus some sort of lens, if the particles go right thru
| everything? You might detect that a cosmic ray or ionizing
| particle hit the satellite, but not where it came from. The
| sun? Australia? Space? Plus, think about particle accelerator
| images and cloud chambers. They are individual streaks. They
| aren't gradients the way normal light would create an image.
| So, the farther away you are, the less likely these particles
| will hit you. If you attached a geiger counter to a hot air
| balloon, starting from this radioactive capsule, you'd hear
| rapid clicks, then infrequent clicks, then no clicks, then the
| clicks would increase due to cosmic rays. If directional geiger
| counters existed, I feel like people would have been using
| those instead of what they currently use. So, I doubt satellite
| nuclear radiation imaging exists.
|
| I looked up Fukushima satellite maps, and they all say they are
| fluid simulations based on ground sensor data.
| roywiggins wrote:
| There are gamma-ray detectors that can determine direction:
|
| > The LAT detects gamma rays by using Einstein's famous E =
| mc2 equation in a technique known as pair production. When a
| gamma ray, which is pure energy, slams into a layer of
| tungsten in the detector, it can create a pair of subatomic
| particles (an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a
| positron). The direction of the incoming gamma ray is
| determined by projecting the direction of these particles
| back to their source using several layers of high-precision
| silicon tracking detectors.
|
| https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/221503main_GLAST-041508.pdf
| [deleted]
| perihelions wrote:
| That technique doesn't work on Earth; the atmosphere's too
| thick to pass gamma rays (in either direction). An atmospheric
| column has the mass of a ~10 meter column of water.
|
| It's pretty effective on other planetoids, though:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Prospector?useskin=vecto...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| With sd cards, USB sticks, etc. I have concluded that anything
| very valuable should be made big enough so that its presence or
| absence is unmissable.
|
| Maybe this capsule was kept in a bigger container, maybe not. In
| any case, if they are so dangerous, IMHO every capsule should be
| kept in its own large container individually tracked. Hell,
| nowadays you could cheaply fit a container with its own GPS
| tracker and eliminate risks of loss altogether.
| campuscodi wrote:
| A dingo will eat it, transform into Fenrir, and that's how
| Ragnarok starts
| gtvwill wrote:
| Nah they've shot and trapped most dingos over that side. They
| don't recognise them as native animals so they allow
| eradication. its sad af :( they rare as over west.
| number6 wrote:
| And soon the world will cease to be.
|
| The northern wind brings snow and ice Humans starve and freeze
| The Fimbul winter has arrived And soon the world will cease to
| be Brother will be brother's bane No one shall be spared All
| will die, none remain That is mankind's share
|
| The southern sphere is set ablaze Muspel's fire is set free The
| sun is on its final chase And soon the world will cease to be
|
| Across the western sky he runs A wolf so grim and mean Devours
| the eternal sun And soon the world will cease to be
| dheera wrote:
| For something that radioactive wouldn't it be easy to find by
| just driving the highway with a Geiger counter? It should be
| about 100 times easier to find than a lost FedEx package.
| Animats wrote:
| Here's what gauge sources like this look like.[1] Here are some
| packed for shipping. bolted to a crate, as described in the NY
| Times article.[2] The locks are $8 Master Lock combination
| padlocks, probably just to keep people from opening the things by
| accident. The lock looks optional on the model in [2].
|
| The lock is on the shutter end, anyway. The cover plate that
| gives access to the source for replacement is secured by four
| security-type Torx screws. No sign of anything like aircraft
| safety wires to prevent the screws loosening. That cover plate
| looks like the weak point here.
|
| The wooden crate shown is "Type A" packaging, which is rated for
| "conditions normally encountered during transportation".[3]
| Doesn't even have to be fully watertight, just spray-resistant.
| Not super tough, just strong enough to stack 5 high. That's all
| that the IAEA requires.
|
| So you can see how a few hundred miles on a flatbed truck on a
| bumpy road could cause this accident. Especially on a decade old
| source. These gauge sources need a new radiation source every
| 10-15 years, so shipping them back for source replacement is
| routine.
|
| IAEA overview of such gauges.[4]
|
| [1]
| https://www.advgauging.com/product/berthold-7440-d-cr-500-mc...
|
| [2] https://www.qsa-global.com/industrial-cs-137-gamma-sources
|
| [3]
| https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...
|
| [4]
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f14/rmem2_0....
| jl6 wrote:
| Wow, I thought maybe these devices were available only through
| some kind of secure government channel, but nope, "Add to cart"
| right there.
|
| I guess at least they have this footnote: "Note: Users must be
| licensed to possess them before they can be purchased."
| userbinator wrote:
| You can always request to purchase one, but I doubt they'll
| just ship it without checking who you are first.
| mlazos wrote:
| COMB THE DESERT!
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hD5eqBDPMDg
| doubleunplussed wrote:
| Manifold market on whether the capsule will be found:
|
| https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/will-the-radioacti...
| bayesianbot wrote:
| https://archive.is/9oNiT
| karmakaze wrote:
| Here's a story about a lost capsule[0] that ended up being made
| into building material for the wall of an apartment if you think
| something small isn't worth being concerned about.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| The equipment to detect high levels of radiation is very cheap.
|
| Likewise the equipment to detect lead... And hundreds of other
| deadly pollutants.
|
| Part of owning a house should involve getting it tested,
| perhaps once per 10 years, for all these contaminants. They
| might have been put in during construction - or it might be
| arsenic in the wood of your bed... Or a mixing mistake while
| making the plastic for your toothbrush handle... Or that
| mercury lightbulb someone smashed 50 years ago is still soaking
| through the foundations...
|
| A simple test of the dust your vacuum cleaner picks up would
| detect most of the most hazardous stuff.
|
| However contamination got into your house, there should be a
| government scheme to test for it, and possibly to remediate it
| too (environmental contamination can be seriously expensive to
| fix, and the last thing you want to happen is someone to hide
| it from an inspector and sell the house on to someone else)
| dsauss wrote:
| Are there testing services you've used before or would
| recommend to perform the testing? There does not seem to be a
| major brand or service provider offering this. Thank you!
| im3w1l wrote:
| Yeah it sounds amazing in theory, but none of us have the
| time to figure that out. It's just way too complicated. It
| needs to be dumbed down so that you contact one single
| company, they send a guy over with a bunch of kits and
| translates it into an easily understandable how-fucked-are-
| you score, with upsells for improving your score.
| [deleted]
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Not a direct answer, but there are lead testing kits on
| Amazon. You mail a tap water sample to a lab. The "kit" is
| not much more than a vial and prepaid shipping label on a
| small box.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| As long as people understand what's a safe level of
| contamination. There was a problem in New Zealand a few years
| ago when somebody misread a document describing the level of
| meth residue that should remain after cleaning up a meth lab
| and as a result, a whole little meth testing industry popped
| up and people were selling their houses cheap because of very
| light contamination being detected. Even an elderly lady in a
| state house was kicked out because her grandson had smoked
| meth while visiting. Turned out, that threshold was much
| lower than the actual safe level for the initial
| contamination and all these people were screwed over.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Most Americans would still choose not to do this because any
| knowledge of a positive lead test means that you need to
| report it when you sell your house which might effect resale
| value.
|
| The large majority (>90%) of houses built before 1940 have
| lead paint in them somewhere and lead paint wasn't banned
| until 1970 in the US so many older houses still have lead
| paint somewhere
| Gigachad wrote:
| Presumably if you care about testing for lead, you'd also
| care enough to have it dealt with while you are living
| there.
| [deleted]
| riffic wrote:
| this seems to happen quite frequently according to a linked
| article about orphan sources.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incident...
| derbOac wrote:
| Stuff like that is frightening to me because they're known
| incidents. I wonder if there's a way to estimate the number
| of unknown ones.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I don't really buy the "fell off a truck" story, will be very
| surprised if they find this before it gives someone cancer... and
| if whoever took it knows what they're doing, it will never be
| found.
| pantry-man wrote:
| What motive would someone have to do this? Seems like a
| baseless conspiracy theory
| xwdv wrote:
| It'd be very useful. Imagine having a weapon capable of
| killing someone off covertly. You could keep the capsule in a
| lead box, and whenever you want to get rid of an enemy, put
| the capsule somewhere close to where they sleep, and leave it
| there long enough to induce radiation sickness or cancer in
| the target. Then you could retrieve the capsule and continue
| this process with another enemy.
| eigenhombre wrote:
| I worked in cosmic rays for a time and there is some overlap
| between the challenge of finding the capsule, and common
| astroparticle physics problems.
|
| > The capsule, which contains a small amount of cesium-137, is
| dangerously radioactive, according to the authorities. An hour of
| exposure at about a meter away is the equivalent of having 10
| X-rays, and prolonged contact can cause skin burns, acute
| radiation sickness and cancer, they said.
|
| I'd think this should be enough information to calculate the size
| (which the authorities should know, but we probably don't), and
| from the size the total beta and gamma flux should be calculable.
| Once the fluxes are understood, I imagine that could tell you how
| fast/slow you could/should drive on the highway to have a good
| chance of detection (I imagine the penetrating gamma signal would
| give better odds), for any given detector, assuming some maximum
| distance of the capsule from the highway.
|
| Interesting problem, I hope they pick it up before someone gets
| hurt.
| kibwen wrote:
| We know the dimensions of the capsule, there's a video where
| someone 3D-printed a replica and it's about the dimensions of a
| medicine capsule, though slightly squatter. Think lego-head
| sized.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| but if it fell on a ditch on the side of the highway, the
| attenuation by the asphalt would be quite significant, even if
| the original max distance assumption was quite exaggerated.
| Interesting problem indeed !
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