I was hoping it was going to be by using antineutrinos, something the U.S. and the U.K. have been developing behind the scenes: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/physics/research/particle/neutri...
How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
71–80 of 83 posts
Re: How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
#72Cool use of gamma-ray imaging technology! The underlying technology is a coded aperture to give a random response on the detector that can be used to reconstruct the direction of the gamma-ray source. I think they are using a moving mask with a single detector in the middle. They probably didn't know if the source had broken apart and caused more contamination when they found the general area. So the imaging allows y…
Cool tech! Spent a chunk of a past life building radiation detection equipment and mapping it in various ways - it's neat to see the state of the art moving forward. Is your LAMP device using coded aperture (in that tiny form factor?) or some other technique for mapping directionality?
Awesome! we're using coded aperture and Compton imaging
Re: How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
#73This is not the title of the article, and it should be changed. Besides, what's kph?
Not a imperial thing
Re: How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
private company fucks up and government cleans up the mess :)
What's the other option? Let the company search for it? You'd be complaining that the government wasn't involved enough if that's what they did. The company offered to pay for the search before the search was even concluded. Not sure what more you can ask for.
fines and potentially losing their license for repeated mistakes
Re: How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
#75Good job, but a lot of the reports really exaggerate the size of the search area. > in the formidable conditions of the outback... > It’s fair to say finding a piece of equipment the size of a button in a vast desert was no easy task Let's not go too far here. It was two metres from the road and they knew exactly which 1400km of roads to check.
I agree. It seems that a simple gamma ray direction finder mounted to a low flying aircraft should have been sufficient assuming that the background radiation was not a concern. They could have triangulated/geolocated to a small area very quickly.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7009180_A_simple_ga...
Re: How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pokhran-II was a series of five nuclear bomb test explosions conducted by India in May 1998, Pakistan responded with six underground nuclear tests at the Chagai and Kharan test site conducted fifteen days after India's last test. It was all abit unexpected at the time and the US was interested to know how it came to be that Australians were present.
I am sorry I am not following the connection between Pokhran-II nuclear tests and Australia. Would you mind sharing some more information or a link maybe?
An Australian radiometric survey team were there at the time over the area during the first detonation .. and for the rest of the series.
Things got ... interesting.
Re: How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am sorry I am not following the connection between Pokhran-II nuclear tests and Australia. Would you mind sharing some more information or a link maybe?
It sounds like a fascinating story indeed, but I can't find anything about it after a search.
True story, and these days you'd probably have to go to paper copies to find quotes from senior US defence | politicians expressing surprise at tests that seemingly came out of nowhere.
I dare say somebody might write it up well after retirement for release after death.
Re: How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am sorry I am not following the connection between Pokhran-II nuclear tests and Australia. Would you mind sharing some more information or a link maybe?
An Australian radiometric survey team were there at the time over the area during the first detonation .. and for the rest of the series. Things got ... interesting.
Oh. and why were they there in the first place? On some scientific research field study / invited by the Indian government?
Re: How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
An Australian radiometric survey team were there at the time over the area during the first detonation .. and for the rest of the series. Things got ... interesting.
Oh. and why were they there in the first place? On some scientific research field study / invited by the Indian government?
Ostensibly for a routine few hundred thousand line kilometres of geophysical survey in northern India for mineral exploration.
Contracted to a cutout company.
It just happened to be the first such survey in India and to coincidentally be at the exact place and time the area turned into an underground nuclear test site.
Re: How to find a tiny radioactive source while doing 70 kph
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The news was a bit of a beat-up and the chances of just accidentally stumbling on it out there were pretty remote to essentially nil. But what's authority to do? If some kid had found it and took it to school there'd be hell to play. Based of its stated radiation signature it was always going to be easy to find. Right, it was a simple but nuisance task and took about as long as expected.
> hell to play. not sure if this was a typo, but the phrase I'm familiar with is "hell to pay". https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/there...
Yeah, another damn typo I've missed, it's embarrassing. I understand the correct phrase.
Last week, I wrote 'we all cropped it' instead of 'we all copped it' which makes no sense—yet I reread that text three times, twice before posting and once thereafter and yet I still missed it.
I wish HN would allow typographical corrections past the usual edit deadline. Bad typos distract so they reduce the impact of what one is trying to say.
Thanks for pointing it out.