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Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi

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Re: Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi

#31

Post by smegger001 »

drdeadringer wrote: post #30
vl wrote: post #27

They retrieved the second device by flying there! Why not to place it on the mountain by flying there in the first place instead of climbing?

Perhaps like in 'Lord Of The Rings', don't think too hard about Gandalf and the Great Eagles.

Or that he sent a hobbit with the one ring into a mountain alone where one of the two thing that were capable of destroying the ring happened to be located.

Gandalf sent Bilbo on a suicide mission into the lonely mountain to get burnt by a dragon to melt the ring avoiding the war of men and orcs entirely.

Re: Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi

#32

Post by Retric »

mhh__ wrote: post #19
Retric wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complete failure of British Intelligence to predict the fall of the USSR shows they might have gotten better at counter espionage, but still failed at their primary job. The tricky bit isn’t collecting intelligence, the tricky bit is being able to turn raw data into something worth all the effort of collecting it.

True, but economics predicting 2*n of the last n crashes and Noam Chomsky predicting 17 of the last 0 revolutions indicates that it's an impossibly difficult problem than mere incompetence. SIS do not publish their archival material so we'll probably never know exactly which side of that argument they deserve to be placed.

Predicting the timing of a crash is basically impossible, but predicting instability is more straightforward. To use a recent example the US stock market basically ignored COVID until mid February, but in January people where talking about an economic risks of a possible pandemic and the signs just kept getting worse.

Re: Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi

#33

Post by smegger001 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #21
pm90 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, ingesting plutonium can cause serious problems. I’m surprised that the Indian Government hasn’t commissioned an exhaustive, multi year search for this device. Maybe the snow is too deep? But I can’t see why one couldn’t carefully skewer into the snow, tessellate the whole mountain with such probes and see if it picks up any radioactivity.

Wouldn't thermal vision be better at finding it? Presumably the thing is hot (especially compared to ambient) and should be visible with some advanced thermal imaging solutions?

hot and under hundreds of feet of very cold compacted ice

Re: Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi

#34

Post by closeparen »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #11

For people who don't want to slog through the long-form article for the few tidbits of actual information: "Nuclear device" does not refer to a nuclear weapon in this case, it was a radio signal capturing device powered by a RTG. They had to abandon the first one when trying to install it due to bad weather and couldn't find it again. Maybe it was stolen, maybe it just melted its way under many meters of ice and snow…

"We could use a power orb."

https://xkcd.com/2115/

Re: Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi

#35

Post by mhh__ »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #12
Ericson2314 wrote: post #2

The more one learns, the more it seems like the CIA spent the whole cold war poorly executing silly stunts,

Imagine what happened that WASN'T documented. This is totally off-topic but related to your post: The CIA LSD testing was completely off the books. The journalists who uncovered it relied on hundreds of interviews. The CIA simply hired Sidney Gottlieb to do whatever he wanted to with zero oversight because the CIA wanted to achieve mind-control before the Russians. Gottlieb literally bought all of the LSD in the worl…

It's not impossible that British efforts along those lines are even worse because we know that they did play with (not quite as "move fast and break things" as the CIA) LSD, but there's no real pressure or habit of properly declassifying material from the depths like this (MI5 do publish a little, SIS do not at all, ever... no matter how hard you ask). What little MKULTRA material exists was preserved almost purely by luck, IIRC.

I also don't even want to imagine what the Soviets got up too - they'd probably laugh at Enhanced Interrogation.

Re: Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi

#36

Post by GekkePrutser »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #18
nafizh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So after 870 years, it begins to pollute the water?

10 half lives means it will have reduced radioactivity to (1/2/2/2/2/2/2/2/2/2/1)*100 % of original or .19% of its original radioactivity. Also keep in mind radioactive decay is not even. The faster, thus more dangerous, particles inherently decay faster and will be even more degraded, I'm not going to do the math on it, but, probably another order of magnitude or three.

True but plutonium is pretty poisonous too. Luckily the ocean is very big

Re: Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi

#38

Post by thombat »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #18
nafizh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So after 870 years, it begins to pollute the water?

10 half lives means it will have reduced radioactivity to (1/2/2/2/2/2/2/2/2/2/1)*100 % of original or .19% of its original radioactivity. Also keep in mind radioactive decay is not even. The faster, thus more dangerous, particles inherently decay faster and will be even more degraded, I'm not going to do the math on it, but, probably another order of magnitude or three.

The connection between half life and decay energy isn't so linear. Looking at a table of gamma ray energies [0] one can see that the lowest-energy distinct five have half lives in hours:

    5994
     104
       6
    2904
  482117
with the highest-energy distinct five in hours:

          12.8
          15.0
           3.48
           1.9
  6280920000    (717,000 years!)
However since the output power is the product of the activity and the decay energy it certainly follows a diminishing curve since fewer decays as time advances.

[0] https://application.wiley-vch.de/books/info/0-471-35633-6/to...

Re: Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi

#40

Post by saboot »

ceejayoz wrote: post #22
Nextgrid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure this one was like that? I'd assume RTGs are a small enough market that they would be pretty much all be custom-made and tailored to the current requirements, and given this isn't a space probe and must be covertly transported by people on foot I would be surprised if they have the same amount of shielding/protection than the ones made for space.

Yes; even the Earth-bound ones are made to withstand major vehicle crashes, corrosion, etc. Ignorant humans dissembling them is a bigger concern.

Yes, this has happened many times with medical radioisotopes. People find them in a scrap yard, get amazed by the glowing blue powder, and leave a deadly trail of contamination until it's discovered what happened.
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