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Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

npr.org

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Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#11

Post by trimbo »

ams6110 wrote: post #2

Pretty lacking on specifics. What was the actual radiation level measured? I would assume these were not buckets of pure uranium, but of uranium ore that is naturally all over the place in the West, and not terribly radioactive in its natural state.

From a screenshot at [1]

* 800 mR/hr if you touched the ore

* 280 mR/hr on the surface of the bucket (sealed)

* "0 above background" if you were 5 ft away from the bucket

* 2.5 mR/hr if you were touching the cabinet it was in

[1] - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#12

Post by gotocake »

trimbo wrote: post #11
ams6110 wrote: post #2

Pretty lacking on specifics. What was the actual radiation level measured? I would assume these were not buckets of pure uranium, but of uranium ore that is naturally all over the place in the West, and not terribly radioactive in its natural state.

From a screenshot at [1] * 800 mR/hr if you touched the ore * 280 mR/hr on the surface of the bucket (sealed) * "0 above background" if you were 5 ft away from the bucket * 2.5 mR/hr if you were touching the cabinet it was in [1] - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...

Basically unless you were having a very prolonged and loving relationship with the bucket, you were exposed to nothing of consequence. That doesn’t excuse the morons who kept this stuff, and if a kid took a souvenir home or there had been a fire it could have been a lot worse. They may have also had unacceptable levels of radon. If I worked there I’d want to know more, but just as a visitor I’d shrug and get on with life.

I’m wondering why they used R instead of Sv though. It’s a single source with a single quality factor, and were only concerned with the impact on humans.

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#13

Post by trumped »

mirimir wrote: post #8

Years ago, I was working in a biochem lab, and helping a state senator's staff draft legislation. The state capitol building was classic granite and marble. So one day, I brought in a Geiger counter. Everyone freaked ;)

did you test your kitchen counter?

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#14

Post by tinus_hn »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #10
ams6110 wrote: post #2

Pretty lacking on specifics. What was the actual radiation level measured? I would assume these were not buckets of pure uranium, but of uranium ore that is naturally all over the place in the West, and not terribly radioactive in its natural state.

* 800 mR/hr if you physically touched the rocks * 280-320 mR/hr if you physically touched the bucket(s) * 13.9 mR/hr if you were within 5 ft * 1.85 mR/hr inside the building more than 5 feet away. Also can be thought of as "0 mR/hr above background" * 2.02 mR/hr outside, in the park, on a bright sunny day. 2.02 is "background". i.e. the levels everyone is getting from natural sources outside. 13.9 mR/hr is 139 micros…

You do get a lot more exposure if you’re working at the museum every day though.

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#15

Post by pfdietz »

jhayward wrote: post #9
hirundo wrote: post #5

Depending on the radiation level the public may have benefited via radiation hormesis. With only the given data it's hard to know if this was a net health menace or boon.

The radiation hormesis theory[1] isn't widely accepted and shouldn't be used as a policy mechanism until there is much more known about its legitimacy and limitations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

Also, if one abandons the idea that dose response is linear, there is the possibility that the slope is even larger in the low dose regime than LNT would predict. The conservative approach would then be to adopt stricter limits, not looser ones.

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#17

Post by TheSoftwareGuy »

ratsbane wrote: post #16

Which takes me back to a shower thought I had a long time ago: How do you know you don't need a geiger counter unless you have one?

Somebody else has one?

Realistically though most things aren’t radioactive in a meaningful way.

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#18

Post by gumby »

I remember visiting the Toronto science centre in the 1970s and just pickingup a block of uranium for comparison with a block of aluminium and perhaps other ones. They wanted to teach kids about density.

Glad they didn't use plutonium, which is toxic!

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#19

Post by userbinator »

gumby wrote: post #18

I remember visiting the Toronto science centre in the 1970s and just pickingup a block of uranium for comparison with a block of aluminium and perhaps other ones. They wanted to teach kids about density. Glad they didn't use plutonium, which is toxic!

Uranium is toxic too, but I bet that was depleted uranium, which isn't all that radioactive and the bigger danger is its regular toxicity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#20

Post by sandwall »

As correctly pointed out by other readers, this is a non-issue and complete overreaction. All feeding into misconceptions and irrational fear of radiation.

The "safety professional" was out of his depth and clearly undereducated about the risks of radiation and uranium ore in particular.

Hence, the true risk of a "dirty bomb" -- is psychological, i.e. it would be a weapon of mass disruption (not destruction), triaging a "worried well" would be expensive and time consuming.

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