151–160 of 357 posts
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...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incident...
https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/will-the-radioacti...
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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 toothbru…
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 toothbru…
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!
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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...
> 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 3…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 3…
About 303 g according to the table in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_(unit)
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.
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That story is crazy. Thanks for sharing!
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 on…
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.