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https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
Relevant xkcd content: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
I have SOOO many questions, and this report answers SOOO few of them.
My question is what happened between when they went in the water and when they got off-site medical treatment. 7 hours seems like a long time. Is there on-site medical that would be doing something during that time?
Man in Michigan potentially exposed to radiation levels equivalent to undergoing 4 x-rays at the doctors office. Meanwhile, in Texas, 1.5 people die every day working in Oil and Gas extraction. A few people die every year installing or falling off of wind turbines. But by all means, let's make this a news story instead and keep making nuclear sound scary. I’m sure the person who posted this to HN with this clickbait…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally consider an area dangerous if I need to undergo radiation decontamination after entering it, continue emitting radiation after decontamination, and need to seek medical attention. Maybe the nuclear regulatory bodies have differen definitions?
numbers matter. A human naturally gives off 0.2mSv/year. so basically you are emitting radiation right now, just very slowly. They had 300 counts per minute which would e around 6200 mSv year. But how much is that? the limit in a year for some body parts goes up to 500mSv year for workers. But that's if their body are getting that much radiation for the whole year. TL;DR you're always getting some ionizing radiation,…
Are you sure about that? 6200 mSv is 6.2 Sv, which I understand to be near-universally deadly. That dosage would be profoundly incompatible with the news that the worker was being sent offsite to seek non-emergency medical attention.
Poking around, it looks like "counts per minute" have to get converted to a dosage using an instrument-specific formula. I CBA to go find that formula, but you're quite welcome to.
This is bad but cavity water radiation is usually very weak. Ingestion could be bad but its not like he swallowed a uranium isotope which would be catastrophic.
I wouldn't even call it bad. Reactor pools have basically zero radiation at the surface. The water is constantly filtered and kept very pure to remove contaminants that can be activated by neutrons. Even drinking it I would think would be completely fine. The water itself doesn't get activated.