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Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

nytimes.com

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Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#71

Post by car »

skissane wrote: post #63
pfdietz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 detect…

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.

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

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#72

Post by gnad_sucks »

aww_dang wrote: post #50
LarryMullins wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rule bans exactly what he's doing, accusing people of "just asking questions" in the derogatory sense.

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.

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?

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#73

Post by el_benhameen »

todd8 wrote: post #45
fnands wrote: post #41

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.

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.

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.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#74

Post by gnad_sucks »

13of40 wrote: post #26
gnad_sucks wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 putti…

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".

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.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#75

Post by DrZootron »

cloudking wrote: post #17

Interview question: can you design a system to safely locate and retrieve the capsule?

These systems exist. To name a couple:

https://www.arktis-detectors.com/products/

https://www.ansto.gov.au/products/detection-and-imaging-cori...

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#77

Post by kibwen »

eigenhombre wrote: post #3

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 an…

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.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#78

Post by gtvwill »

campuscodi wrote: post #21

A dingo will eat it, transform into Fenrir, and that's how Ragnarok starts

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.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#79

Post by kibwen »

el_benhameen wrote: post #73
todd8 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

How did you realize it once contained polonium?

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#80

Post by dsfyu404ed »

mc32 wrote: post #60
sebastien_b wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you work at Ford as an executive during the Pinto era?

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/misunderstood-ca...

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".
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