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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

#201

Post by slyall »

sacrosancty wrote: post #131
londons_explore wrote: post #113

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…

As long as people understand what's a safe level of contamination. There was a problem in New Zealand a few years ago when somebody misread a document describing the level of meth residue that should remain after cleaning up a meth lab and as a result, a whole little meth testing industry popped up and people were selling their houses cheap because of very light contamination being detected. Even an elderly lady in a…

I had a friend who was employed by one of the dodgy New Zealand testing companies.

Her facebook feed was full of lots of articles that deliberately confused the contamination from household meth labs with contamination from people who just used meth.

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

#202

Post by defrost »

sn9 wrote: post #178
BetterGeiger wrote: post #167

Radiation detection is my specialty. This source is Cs-137, few hundred mCi. It's easy to detect within a few seconds at distances of a few tens of meters or more with professional detection equipment if there is direct line of sight. If it was knocked off the road, though, the question will be if it fell into a crack or other such place because then the radiation is somewhat shielded and it would take much more meas…

This is an interesting algorithm problem. Given the parameters to maximize detection and minimize time/resources, how would you direct a drone or something to find the capsule? How would that change with 2 drones? 4? 8? As many drones as there are flyable Geiger counters in the country?

You'd pretty much start with a local radiometric survey company (there are a few in Perth) using a 50 litre doped sodium iodide cyrstal pack (a bit heavy for a drone) and scintillation counters in a crop duster flying at 40 m ground clearence dead centre down the road at 70 m/sec for the full 1,400 km road length.

Post process the 256 value gamma spectrum, correcting for cosmic, aircraft signature, remove the mean average W.Australia backround signature, run a full rolling NASVD to peak sharpen and look for 32 and 662 kev twin peaks.

Then you'd start with the local area ground search.

Given the lapsed time already there's a good chance the slug in question was either magpie'd on site or has been picked up in a tire and gone off route.

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

#203

Post by moffkalast »

bonzini wrote: post #156
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #119

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…

300 Ci is 11 TBq (terabecquerel), or 11·10^12 decays per second. Co-60 has a half life of 166 million seconds, so it was 11·166·10^18/ln 2 atoms=2.6·10^21 atoms, which is 0.004 moles (a mole is 6.02·10^23 atoms). 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.

> 166 million seconds

Or 5,2 years

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

#204

Post by worthless-trash »

nineteen999 wrote: post #166
AlbertCory wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best reply on this thread. Everything in Australia kills you or at least causes horrible pain. Even that cute platypus or that harmless-looking shell on the beach. And now this.

Fortunately, over 85% of us live in the cities, due to much of the rest of the country where most of the dangerous shit is being mostly uninhabitable anyway. The further south you live the safer you are generally speaking. Where I live (far south) the most dangerous creature you're going to run into in the city is probably a redback spider, which is related to a black widow, and there hasn't been a confirmed death fr…

Tell me you live in the city, without telling me you live in the city ;)

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

#205

Post by slyall »

anakaine wrote: post #89
AlbertCory wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best reply on this thread. Everything in Australia kills you or at least causes horrible pain. Even that cute platypus or that harmless-looking shell on the beach. And now this.

No moose, bears, wolves, cougars, or other alpha predators in Australia though. About the worst are wild dogs / dingos, though they typically won't be a problem unless they're in a pack. I'll take Australian dangers over North American every day of the week.

I'm pretty sure the Dropbear counts as an alpha predators.

https://australian.museum/learn/animals/mammals/drop-bear/

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

#206

Post by worthless-trash »

AlbertCory wrote: post #171
rukuu001 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, Australian here. Yes, for 85% of the country, risk is small. Crocodiles are the only major danger, and they're isolated to the far north of the country. But they are truly terrifying, in that they are silent and invisible in the water, intelligent, and capable of watching a human for days to learn their routine and plan an ambush.

I was in Cairns & a little north of there for a bit. Certainly never went all the way to Cape York. Although I did go on a kayaking expedition to Dunk Island, where there were only four 2-person kayaks, unusually high waves, and my boat-mate asked, "Are we going to sink?" Obviously we didn't. Of course this is all for laughs, but some HN'ers are incapable of that.

Fun Story time.

I grew up in far north Queensland, the risk of crocodials are always one of those real but manageable risks in your life, I was very young and remember a family friend being taken by a large one (Search for Beryl Wruck in Daintree), I am very familiar with the risks, but risks are part of life in that area.

I regularly spend time there and was canooing one of the fresh water creeks which lead into the river to the sea. I had done a few different creeks a few times to the mouth of the daintree river, this time my wife wanted to join, she wasnt keen to paddle.

She took the first half (~18km) of the trip easy, barely paddling, we got to the main river where the water turned from fresh to brackish a smallish (3m) croc was sunning himself in the winter sun (crocs are more active in hotter months, so he was just chilling). Within seconds of pointing it out I no longer had to paddle, "mrs trash" was inspired to help with her part of the paddling.

I know that many people here would be mad about taking risks, but its just part of life living in the country.

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

#207

Post by worthless-trash »

rukuu001 wrote: post #168
anakaine wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No moose, bears, wolves, cougars, or other alpha predators in Australia though. About the worst are wild dogs / dingos, though they typically won't be a problem unless they're in a pack. I'll take Australian dangers over North American every day of the week.

Hello, Australian here. Yes, for 85% of the country, risk is small. Crocodiles are the only major danger, and they're isolated to the far north of the country. But they are truly terrifying, in that they are silent and invisible in the water, intelligent, and capable of watching a human for days to learn their routine and plan an ambush.

Then they usually pick the smaller of the group, which is why you see more dogs taken than people.

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

#208

Post by rowanG077 »

Bluecobra wrote: post #193
BetterGeiger wrote: post #167

Radiation detection is my specialty. This source is Cs-137, few hundred mCi. It's easy to detect within a few seconds at distances of a few tens of meters or more with professional detection equipment if there is direct line of sight. If it was knocked off the road, though, the question will be if it fell into a crack or other such place because then the radiation is somewhat shielded and it would take much more meas…

> Getting closer, like putting it directly against your torso, would mean serious health effects in a matter of minutes. Let’s hope that some random person doesn’t find it and turn it into a necklace or something. The TNG episode “Thine Own Self” comes to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

Stuff of nightmares.

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

#209

Post by eternityforest »

londons_explore wrote: post #113
karmakaze wrote: post #4

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...

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…

What we really need is a government scheme for realtime detection built into phones. There are plenty of research papers, hard to believe it's truly impossible to make a consumer grade Bluetooth mini LIBS or at least a scintillation counter in a phone, or a microscope that can look at dust in the air to find asbestos, etc.

I've even heard of work on realtime virus detection.

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

#210

Post by eternityforest »

Animats wrote: post #135

Here's what gauge sources like this look like.[1] Here are some packed for shipping. bolted to a crate, as described in the NY Times article.[2] The locks are $8 Master Lock combination padlocks, probably just to keep people from opening the things by accident. The lock looks optional on the model in [2]. The lock is on the shutter end, anyway. The cover plate that gives access to the source for replacement is secure…

Can't imagine those things are available anywhere for that cheap. Why not require 4g tracking on them all if they're already $1000 items?
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