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Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

abc.net.au

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Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#201

Post by mulmen »

twawaaay wrote: post #197
mulmen wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Why not attach this thing to a beacon so that it can't be lost?" It’s literally radio active. It is a beacon.

It was literally lost. A properly engineered beacon cannot be lost this way as long as it operates.

> He said a search vehicle was driving past at 70 kilometres per hour on the Great Northern Highway when a detection device revealed radiation.

They found it because it is literally a beacon.

Beacons do nothing to prevent loss, they only facilitate relocation.

Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#202

Post by theandrewbailey »

> The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, this morning joined those disappointed to learn the maximum penalty for mishandling radioactive material in such a manner was $1,000.

Occam's razor suggests that the fine was put into law, then inflation happened and no one bothered to increase the fine.

Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#203

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

I-M-S wrote: post #56
lqet wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The apartment was fully settled in 1980. A year later, an 18-year-old woman who lived there suddenly died. In 1982, her 16-year-old brother followed, and then their mother. [All from leukemia]. [...] A new family moved into the apartment, and their son died from leukemia as well. > A child's bed was located directly next to the wall containing the capsule.

Naturally occurring radiation might play a part in human tendency to regard certain places as haunted.

Actually "haunted" locations are often linked to carbon monoxide and infrasound, IIRC. We generally don't blame ghosts for mysterious burns or other signs of radiation sickness.

Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#204

Post by [deleted] »

twawaaay wrote: post #192
mhb wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What an engineer thinks: "Why not attach this thing to a beacon so that it can't be lost?" Or put cameras everywhere to deter crime.

I am not asking to limit anybody's freedom. A beacon would be attached to radiation source. Unless you are an individual who walks around with a highly toxic, highly dangerous radiation source, requiring it to have a beacon will not limit your freedom. As to putting cameras to deter crime, they are shown not to work. The crime just moves to where there are no cameras. Or stupid people will crime anyway. US is leading…

[deleted]

Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#205

Post by walnutclosefarm »

Waterluvian wrote: post #145

I don’t understand how one capsule of that size could fall off a truck without coming with a lot of other stuff too. What was the cargo configuration of this transport?

The official explanation so far is that the capsule was secured in its holding device which in turn was in a box secured on a pallet. The device was shaken apart by road vibration, and likewise one of the four bolts holding the box to the pallet was shaken out. The capsule bounced through the bolt hole, off the back of the truck and onto the roadside.

I think we'll have to wait until the Australian authorities finish an investigation to find out whether that improbable sequence of events is what happened, or whether Rio Tinto put a badly damaged, disassembled detector assembly into a box, did a poor job of securing the box, and THEN the part bounced out from road vibration. Given where it was found, though, I think we can be reasonably certain the last part is true.

Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#206

Post by tokai »

igbk wrote: post #128
perihelions wrote: post #101

Is the idea of blameless postmortem that exotic in the general public? If I hear that a critical safety system failed, my first association isn't "find the individual closest to responsibility, and look into whether a criminal prosecution is feasible". - "We have the ability to prosecute under the radiation safety act and we will certainly look at such prosecutions, and we've done that in the past," [Chief Health Off…

I suspect the extend and target of postmortem blame varies considerably from culture to culture. An anecdote from the railroad traffic between Germany and Denmark: "[In 2019, a DB Cargo freight train in Denmark caused an accident with a passenger train on its way to Copenhagen after a truck trailer flew off the freight train due to high winds. The German side was keen to find out who was responsible at the lowest lev…

Not that surprising. The wagon inspector was a dane in denmark. The organizational responsibility was on german leaders in a german company. In the end nothing happened.

Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#207

Post by weberer »

ivan4th wrote: post #27

BTW, there was an accident in Ukraine (Soviet Union at the time) related to a radioactive capsule that ended up in the wall of an apartment building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...

There was also an incident in the country of Georgia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident

Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#208

Post by walnutclosefarm »

seanhandley wrote: post #135

> "The search crews have quite literally found the needle in the haystack." Apart from flagrant abuse of the word "literally", this was an interesting read.

Yes, but a bit overblown. They left out the part where the needle was glowing with highly penetrating radiation, 1000 times brighter than the hay, and everything - needle and haystack - was spread out along a known path. It looks like they did a great job, but for a crew with the right equipment, the capsule wasn't very well hidden.

Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#209

Post by Ekaros »

Someone wrote: post #196
trilbyglens wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just put it in a bulky plastic blister pack, like we do for like, razors? Make the tiny thing larger and harder to lose?

But it already was larger; It was part of a “density gauge” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_densitometry ). It’s not as if somebody but this in a trouser pocket (would be extremely foolish, of course) or laid it on the car’s dashboard (slightly less foolish, but still extremely so) and then lost it. I wouldn’t know whether the pictures on that Wikipedia page resemble what this was on, but I expect it to have…

Now I wonder why wasn't it glued, packed or something in larger material. I think there should be something light and relatively non-opaque for radiation.

Re: Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search

#210

Post by akiselev »

egorfine wrote: post #64
wayvey wrote: post #9

If this had been found by the wrong people, what kind of nefarious uses could it have had?

Irradiate someone by putting the capsule in the immediate vicinity in their living space. That's about the evilest use I can imagine for this radiation source.

I am sad to inform you that you have no future as a supervillain.

With a radiation source like this even a dust sized particle, if ingested or inhaled, is enough to cause excruciating death. Anything that turns the capsule into a powder and releases it into the air near a large group of people or into a water source or even a public pool could cause mass fatalities.

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