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

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

#51

Post by dmckeon »

tinus_hn wrote: post #14
kevin_b_er wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 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.

Note that the South Rim of GCNP is at 7,000 feet (2100m) elevation. Also, next week, Feb 26, GCNP is 100 years old.

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

#52

Post by Spooky23 »

sandwall wrote: post #20

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), triagin…

On a purely radiation focused scale, sure. But this is a big deal, as it’s an indicator of the lack of effective management and controls surrounding it.

Where did it come from?

Why was it stored where it was stored?

Why did employees just dump the material?

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

#53

Post by darkpuma »

supermw wrote: post #50

My mother still has old uranium glassware in her home. Not really sure if it's dangerous or not but it's pretty cool to see in person.

Radiologically, Uranium glass is virtually harmless. However I believe Uranium glass often contains a lot of lead as well, similar to the lead crystal glassware a lot of people own. Lead crystal glass is mostly harmless but not totally harmless, if you leave anything alcoholic or acidic in it long enough, it will leach a significant amount of lead. Used briefly on occasion it's not really a big deal.

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

#54

Post by [deleted] »

Spooky23 wrote: post #52
sandwall wrote: post #20

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), triagin…

On a purely radiation focused scale, sure. But this is a big deal, as it’s an indicator of the lack of effective management and controls surrounding it. Where did it come from? Why was it stored where it was stored? Why did employees just dump the material?

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by paulcole »

saalweachter wrote: post #45
mehrdadn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this chart and yet it's always fascinating. A dental X-ray is like eating 50 bananas, and half of what you would get over the course of a normal day.

50 bananas is an interesting quantity in that it is conceivable you could eat that many in short order, but I'd be worried about someone who did (but not because of the radiation).

The record for bananas eaten in 1 sitting is 30:

https://recordsetter.com/world-record/bananas-eaten-sitting/...

And the record most in 1 minute is “only” 8.

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

#56

Post by walrus01 »

paulcole wrote: post #55
saalweachter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 bananas is an interesting quantity in that it is conceivable you could eat that many in short order, but I'd be worried about someone who did (but not because of the radiation).

The record for bananas eaten in 1 sitting is 30: https://recordsetter.com/world-record/bananas-eaten-sitting/... And the record most in 1 minute is “only” 8.

That sounds like a challenge for Matt Stonie

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

#57

Post by acidburnNSA »

pfdietz wrote: post #33
sandwall wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6043938/

Nothing there contradicts what I wrote. The notion seems to be the alternative to LNT is "radiation is not as bad at low doses as LNT". But there are many alternatives, all consistent with the evidence, and some would have the effect at low doses be worse. Radiation is not a criminal defendant that requires proof beyond reasonable doubt to be regulated.

Expensively regulating something well below any detectable effect could have negative consequences regardless of whether or not it is a criminal defendant. For instance, nuclear power plants are very nearly carbon free, yet they're expensive in part because of the Linear No-Threshold model of radiation dose at very low doses. If they were cheaper and we were fully decarbonized in 1995, we could avoid the other more detectable effects of global warming.

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

#58

Post by saul_goodman »

Jeezus Cripes, way over reaction. I have Fiestaware plates that put out over 30uSv/h / 3mR/h / 9200cpm. Unrefined uranium ore puts out waaaay less that. As long as you're not sleeping with the junk under your bed or working with it next to your desk all day long you're fine. Even then, it's still less exposure than air crews that fly every day receive. No one was harmed by this.

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

#59

Post by djsumdog »

mehrdadn wrote: post #28
soy_comptroller wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to whip out the XKCD radiation chart[1], which gives us measures around: * One chest CT per hour for touching the ore (or about 9 hours touching the ore to reach your annual max dosge) * One head CT per hour for touching the bucket * nothing for 5ft away * One chest XRay per hour touching the cabinet (less than a cross-country flight LA NYC) [1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/

I've seen this chart and yet it's always fascinating. A dental X-ray is like eating 50 bananas, and half of what you would get over the course of a normal day.

The CT scan is the interesting one. I've talked to some researchers about CT scans, and how they do increase cancer risks. It's not very much, but for serious long-term conditions you might get several CT scans per year and that could increase your cancer risk. When looking up studies the numbers are pretty low, usually under 10%, but it is an interesting risk to be weight against diagnosing and treating the underlying condition.

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

#60

Post by djsumdog »

js2 wrote: post #25

Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19195087 Not nearly as interesting as the radioactive boyscout story: https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scou... David Hahn sadly passed away at 39: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioa...

The boysout and the smoke detector nuclear experiment is one of those really amazing and interesting stories.

Geeze, I wanted to look up him, thinking he'd have gotten an engineering scholarship or something. Looks like he served in the military, but afterwards he got addicted to drugs and died in his late 30s. ... .. Geeze that's fucking tragic.

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