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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

#241

Post by panda88888 »

twawaaay wrote: post #166
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…

Yeah, exactly. What an engineer thinks: "Why not attach this thing to a beacon so that it can't be lost?" What everybody else thinks: "Why not persecute everybody responsible to the fullest possible extent?" Which is just our reptilian brain looking for somebody to blame but isn't actually helping anything.

AirTag it

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

#242

Post by lizzardbraind »

twawaaay wrote: post #166
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…

Yeah, exactly. What an engineer thinks: "Why not attach this thing to a beacon so that it can't be lost?" What everybody else thinks: "Why not persecute everybody responsible to the fullest possible extent?" Which is just our reptilian brain looking for somebody to blame but isn't actually helping anything.

Because the battery would be too heavy.

It's a 6x8mm cylinder, fingernail-sized. They're little pellets that get inserted into larger machines for medical imaging.

See also (or don't, it's a bit gruesome): the Goiânia accident.

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

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

#243

Post by noduerme »

detaro wrote: post #119
noduerme wrote: post #105

Okay, sorry, call me cynical but what are the odds Rio Tinto placed a capsule by the side of the road, to walk off with a $1,000 fine, while whoever ripped open the gauge and stole the material is out there planning God-knows-what?

From their secret stockpile of illegal unregistered radiation sources they smuggled into the country to replace lost registered sources with?

This made me laugh. I was definitely being a bit of a nudge and just free-form conspiracy theorizing. The idea that Rio had to register all their sources never even occurred to me.

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

#244

Post by egberts1 »

bell-cot wrote: post #162
mieko wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> keen to find out who was responsible at the lowest level It's funny how profit flows up, but legal responsibility trickles down.

There are some old stereotypes of detail-obsessed Germans - far too busy measuring the growth rings of a tree with micrometers, and wondering why those are so close together - but never noticing that the tree is small, and growing in a well-shaded part of a large forest.

The absolute worse case of "not seeing the forest for the tree".
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