Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 108 posts

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#41

Post by sandwall »

sandwall wrote: post #40
pfdietz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mindset is that the risk has to proven, as in a court of law, before it can be regulated. This is Lawyer Science, not actual science.

Science is not the regulation of the unknown. So, I dont understand your position at all. And not court of law, by evidence and observation, i.e. science.

LNT is lawyer science, low dose radiation risk (cancer induction) is stochastic. There is already a high prevalence of cancer in society. To protect against possible litigation we eliminate sources as a possible induction points.

However, iff you developed a radiation induced cancer there's very little way to determine if your (mulitple) DNA errors were induced by cosmic rays or that time you walked past a bucket of naturally occurring radiation or due to those flights you took from Colorado to Brazil.

The dose makes the poison, we protect (and waste inordinate amounts of time and money) against low levels -- because we're ignorant to the precise pathways of cancer induction.

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#42

Post by pfdietz »

sandwall wrote: post #40
pfdietz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mindset is that the risk has to proven, as in a court of law, before it can be regulated. This is Lawyer Science, not actual science.

Science is not the regulation of the unknown. So, I dont understand your position at all. And not court of law, by evidence and observation, i.e. science.

Science informs regulation, but regulation is the product of politics.

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#43

Post by sandwall »

pfdietz wrote: post #39
sandwall wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that an unknown risk is _worth_ spending money on to regulate. Don't know if there are boogey men, better protect against them. Costs be damned.

Your mindset is that the risk has to proven, as in a court of law, before it can be regulated. This is Lawyer Science, not actual science.

I'm also surprised that others were quick to shoot the hormesis messenger. This is very well established mechanism of action.

Priming DNA repair pathways acts as a protection from further exposures.

However, and this is my take -- there are people in the population that are more sensitive to the sun. These same people are probably more sensitive to ionizing radiation, LNT protects all, including the most sensitive. That being said, it's taken to an extreme, and allows for sensationalism and fear mongering.

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#44

Post by maxerickson »

tinus_hn wrote: post #14
kevin_b_er wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 800 mR/hr if you physically touched the rocks * 280-320 mR/hr if you physically touched the bucket(s) * 13.9 mR/hr if you were within 5 ft * 1.85 mR/hr inside the building more than 5 feet away. Also can be thought of as "0 mR/hr above background" * 2.02 mR/hr outside, in the park, on a bright sunny day. 2.02 is "background". i.e. the levels everyone is getting from natural sources outside. 13.9 mR/hr is 139 micros…

You do get a lot more exposure if you’re working at the museum every day though.

Only if you spent hours within 5 feet of the bucket.

(That's what the comparison with sunlight is aboot)

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#45

Post by saalweachter »

mehrdadn wrote: post #28
soy_comptroller wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to whip out the XKCD radiation chart[1], which gives us measures around: * One chest CT per hour for touching the ore (or about 9 hours touching the ore to reach your annual max dosge) * One head CT per hour for touching the bucket * nothing for 5ft away * One chest XRay per hour touching the cabinet (less than a cross-country flight LA NYC) [1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/

I've seen this chart and yet it's always fascinating. A dental X-ray is like eating 50 bananas, and half of what you would get over the course of a normal day.

50 bananas is an interesting quantity in that it is conceivable you could eat that many in short order, but I'd be worried about someone who did (but not because of the radiation).

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#46

Post by StanislavPetrov »

ams6110 wrote: post #2

Pretty lacking on specifics. What was the actual radiation level measured? I would assume these were not buckets of pure uranium, but of uranium ore that is naturally all over the place in the West, and not terribly radioactive in its natural state.

>Stephenson said the containers were stored next to a taxidermy exhibit, where children on tours sometimes stopped for presentations, sitting next to uranium for 30 minutes or more. By his calculation, those children could have received radiation dosages in excess of federal safety standards within three seconds, and adults could have suffered dangerous exposure in less than a half-minute.

>The Nuclear Regulatory Commission measures radiation contamination in millisieverts per hour or per year. According to Stephenson, close exposures to the uranium buckets could have exposed adults to 400 times the health limit — and children to 4,000 times what is considered safe.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2019/02/18/grand-...

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#47

Post by rocky1138 »

js2 wrote: post #25

Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19195087 Not nearly as interesting as the radioactive boyscout story: https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scou... David Hahn sadly passed away at 39: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioa...

It would be amazing and not unlike his character to have staged his death.

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#48

Post by austincheney »

monochromatic wrote: post #35
austincheney wrote: post #31

Uranium ore is mostly alpha particle radiation. Clothing and aluminum foil are generally sufficient to block alpha particle radiation. Uranium metal can be up 28% beta particle, which can be blocked by sandbags or a thick brick wall. Depleted uranium contains almost no beta particle radiation. Uranium ore lacks the purity of uranium metal and usually more beta particles than depleted unranium but not much more though…

> Uranium is more dense than lead and thus more poisonous I think there’s a little more to heavy metal toxicity than that...

How so?

Re: Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

#49

Post by tco03 »

austincheney wrote: post #48
monochromatic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uranium is more dense than lead and thus more poisonous I think there’s a little more to heavy metal toxicity than that...

How so?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_toxicity It appears as there if is little correlation between metal density and toxicity
Post reply on HN