[HN Gopher] Nuclear material left in "Swap Shop" at UK Hacker ca...
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Nuclear material left in "Swap Shop" at UK Hacker camp emfcamp
Author : cardinal_black
Score : 87 points
Date : 2024-06-02 21:23 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (meow.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (meow.social)
| cardinal_black wrote:
| https://chaos.social/@jonty/112546819875403045 - Americum 241
| apparently
| pyb wrote:
| The same material is used in smoke detectors.
| pdw wrote:
| But these things have a lot more of it
| pyb wrote:
| Are you sure ? Actually the quantities reported are only a
| bit more than a smoke alarm's worth.
| https://tech.lgbt/@tryst@meow.social/112537465686977310
| pdw wrote:
| I was going by
| https://meow.social/@tryst/112547072349850935
| 317070 wrote:
| Yes, these are like 10 smoke alarms each. 360k becquerel
| each, and a smoke alarm is about 30k.
| perihelions wrote:
| That's a typo. 7 microCurie would be 260 kBq, not 360
| kBq.
|
| This whole thing's a farce; there's nothing remotely
| interesting, or alarming, about a sealed alpha source
| this small. There's countless millions of residential
| smoke detectors of exactly this size, isotope, and basic
| design. (The multiple others commenters are also speaking
| correctly, that _modern_ smoke detectors are about 1
| /10th this size. The older 20th-century models are a bit
| larger).
| thsksbd wrote:
| Ya and it's insane. My college for a project bought dozens of
| fire detectors from the 70s to take the Am out (they had more
| than todays) for a project.
|
| Of course, he had to take the necessary license before he
| started that project.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| > (they had more than todays)
|
| Or at least they used to ;)
| Arcuru wrote:
| It looks like it was confirmed that they've all been accounted
| for:
| https://social.emfcamp.org/@info/statuses/01HZD9RNT3VFHCF5QJ...
| dlgeek wrote:
| Best toot about this:
|
| https://meow.social/@AtomicMaya@tech.lgbt/112536890144120140
|
| ''' OH: "we had a radioactive source dropped at the swap drop
|
| a furry wearing a collar with a shirt showing a furry with the
| radiation symbol came to dispose of it"
|
| most #emfcamp sentence ever '''
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| The furry being referred to is the OP in the link for this
| post, says they work in civilian nuclear.
| HPsquared wrote:
| That is a really confusing sentence to parse.
| slicktux wrote:
| Just reading the comments I found out about this:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez_cobalt-60...
| Xunjin wrote:
| Brazil also had an incident like this one
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Of note is that the (horrible) Goiania incident had a source
| with around 74 tera-Bq, the source in the original post here
| is something like 360 kilo-Bq.
|
| So try to visualize the difference between a 360 kilobyte
| file and a 74 terabyte file. Or the cost difference between a
| cheap pack of chewing gum and an F-35 fighter aircraft.
| HPsquared wrote:
| A factor of 200 million.
| retrac wrote:
| It was not the worst for fatalities, but the one that disturbs
| me most I think, was the one in the 1980s in Ukraine where an
| intense radiation source that was lost, worked its way into
| gravel, that was used for concrete for an apartment building.
| It was in a panel in a bedroom. A young family died of
| leukemia. Another family moved in. The son of the man who moved
| in, soon died of leukemia. He knew about the previous
| residents, and started looking into it, and eventually they
| brought in a radiation specialist and a geiger counter.
|
| The dose rate was about 0.2 R per hour. Enough to almost
| certainly be fatal if you slept next to it regularly for even
| just a few months. Yet low enough that it likely wouldn't cause
| any acute sickness to anyone simply passing through the room
| periodically. Particularly insidious. And so it was in the wall
| for 9 years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...
| tshaddox wrote:
| The disturbing thing about the Juarez contamination is that
| one old radiotherapy machine was able to meaningfully
| contaminate 6,000 _tons_ of rebar.
| perihelions wrote:
| Very editorialized HN title. "Radioisotope source" would be
| accurate and non-clickbaity (in place of "nuclear material").
| MarkMarine wrote:
| I think it's a fair title considering we talk about the
| "Nuclear Boy Scout" with the same title, and he used the same
| source collected from many smoke detectors to perform his
| experiments and the end result was his shed was designated a
| superfund site.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
| nanomonkey wrote:
| The boy scout built a breeder reactor, which is quite a
| different beast as it produces more fissile material over
| time.
| perihelions wrote:
| That's not the same thing though. Those experiments weren't a
| simple alpha-emitter source; they were a neutron source that
| finely combined an alpha source with a low-Z element
| (aluminum? [0]), which was deliberately combined with
| fissionable nuclear material, thorium, to test nuclear
| fission reactions (on a very small scale). It's _technically
| accurate_ to describe that one as a nuclear experiment.
|
| [0] https://cen.acs.org/articles/82/i32/PITFALLS-SELF-GUIDED-
| SCI...
| amluto wrote:
| I don't think I've ever encountered one of these particular
| things objects, but I observe two things:
|
| 1. There's no radiation symbol or mention of any radiation source
| in the picture.
|
| 2. From looking on Wikipedia, this type of device looks like it's
| meant to _measure_ radiation, and there's no mention of any
| reason that it would contain a radioactive source. Household
| smoke detectors contain ionization chambers _and_ a radiation
| source, but they seem to be separate devices.
|
| Is there any reason to believe that this thing contains a
| radioactive source?
| Doxin wrote:
| I mean the guy who went and collected them works in the nuclear
| industry, so I'd imagine he knows what he is on about.
| throwup238 wrote:
| This looks like it measures smoke density by measuring
| radiation. The americium is bound up in a gold matrix called
| "Americium alpha foil" and the sensor essentially measures how
| many alpha particles make it through the smoke.
|
| According to some random Nuclear Regulatory Commission
| documents, a specific EC 23095-1 with Serial no. 830101 was
| used as the calibration standard for testing other MICs:
| https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0037/ML003770968.pdf
| xyst wrote:
| So person drops off some device that measures radiation at a swap
| meet.
|
| ?Somehow person figures out device is radioactive?
|
| Person throws radioactive device in back of truck. Then will
| dispose of properly at civilian nuclear facility.
|
| I guess the worry here is that the other person is unqualified to
| handle and dispose of the device and cause bodily injury to self?
| 42lux wrote:
| An enticing story, but in the end, it's no better than finding an
| old smoke detector at a yard sale.
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(page generated 2024-06-02 23:00 UTC)