Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, people are really clueless about how nuclear power plants really work. It's really not that dangerous to fall into the water.
Hey, no need to be condescending. Some people just haven't read [the xkcd.]( https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ )
A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
401–410 of 545 posts
Re: A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, no need to be condescending. Some people just haven't read [the xkcd.]( https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ )
This is such a better response than "wow some people really are stoopid"
To be fair, you don’t have to be stupid to be clueless. We’re all clueless about plenty of things.
Re: A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question, as daft as it might sound - do they have to chlorinate the water to stop stuff growing in it? I'd expect it'd be about "swimming pool" warm so just great for all sorts of manky algae growing.
The water is borated and heavily purified. You don’t want stuff growing inside, but at the same time you don’t want to have chlorinated water slowly corroding the metal components.
I also read in the XKCD thing that it might be up to about 50° so it's probably a bit uncomfortable for most algae type things.
I bet there's some good chance of getting wacky extremophiles though!
Re: A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
The zeitgeist has been anti-nuclear for so many decades, fear pops up around any topic that's at all adjacent to a reactor.
Or maybe people just don’t that water mitigates radiation really well? You can be very pro-nuclear and still be concerned about radioactive contamination if you don’t know that radioactivity is dramatically reduced by just a few feet of water.
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Re: A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rate matters. 6.2Sv in a single hour is fatal. 6.2Sv in a single year is probably less than average for a human from background radiation. The measurement units for ionizing radiation are very complicated and confusing. That's why people are told to not try to compute this stuff yourself. I have code that computes these units and conversions, its not simple. Here is a brief and simplified explanation of how you calcu…
> PS Sieverts are a physical measure, Greys are a measure of biological "harm". The US's NRC disagrees with you. From [0], they say this about the sievert and rem: Dose equivalent A measure of the biological damage to living tissue as a result of radiation exposure. Also known as the " biological dose," the dose equivalent is calculated as the product of absorbed dose in tissue multiplied by a quality factor and then…
No, you are just confused about the technical jargon being used. That text is written for people who have had this jargon hammered into them and is very confusing to people who haven't. This is why people are told to not try to do the calculations themselves.
"Dose absorbed" is a physical measure of ionizing radiation that is directed at something. That's measured in rems or sieverts (or Grays, notice the spelling). "Dose equivalent" is a medical measure of the risk caused by that "Dose absorbed". That's measured in Greys (with an E, not an A). Both those measures combine the count rates for the 4 different types of radiation into 1 amount. "Dose equivalent" goes farther and is meant to calculate medical risk to a living person. Even more confusing there is a Gray (dose absorbed) and a Grey (biological impact of a dose absorbed, or dose equivalent); they are different.
The part about beta and gamma radiation is about establishing a baseline for converting between the two units but should never be used for calculating "dose equivalent" in practice. Its how we determine the value of 1 Grey. It isn't a way to convert from "dose equivalent" to "dose absorbed".
I'm trying to simplify this stuff for an audience without the necessary background information. Doing that requires me cutting out a bunch of details. The NRC text on the other hand is technically precise but also is mentioning a lot of things that are true but confusing or only useful for calibrating instruments. They are also explaining one tiny part of this and you left out the parts where they talk about how to combine the different counts for each type of radiation into one measurement. That's something else I'm also trying to explain at the same time. So I'm covering more ground and trying to do so with simpler terms. That's going to mean you can cherry pick stuff but doing that will to give you the wrong impression.
Natural background radiation varies by location on earth by a factor of 300. That 4 mSv per year is for natural background radiation at the low end of the scale which happens at sea level in places without Uranium or Thorium deposits. However, there are places where people live (and have lived for 1000s of years) where the natural background radiation is 300x that amount or about 1.2Sv/year. There is no observed increase in cancer rates in those locations despite decades of study. I'm also assuming that the "normal person" will take a flight or two and potentially be near other sources of radiation without knowing it (like your smoke detector).
PS The 50 mSv/year number is absurdly low. Its one of the main complaints about how the NRC handles nuclear radiation. Its literally lower than the natural background radiation at sites in India and Brazil.
Re: A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
dunno if the life vest bit comment of yours was sarcastic, but it is a funny remark for sure :-) it sounds like "guy felt down in a volcano, but fortunately, he had a life vest"
Wow, people are really clueless about how nuclear power plants really work. It's really not that dangerous to fall into the water.
Doesn’t it depend on how far they sink? I’m pretty sure xkcd did a comic on this. Oh, it’s a video, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFRUL7vKdU8
Edit: ok, I’m probably the fiftieth person to point this out. It’s still a good video.
Re: A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
The water is borated and heavily purified. You don’t want stuff growing inside, but at the same time you don’t want to have chlorinated water slowly corroding the metal components.
I also read in the XKCD thing that it might be up to about 50° so it's probably a bit uncomfortable for most algae type things. I bet there's some good chance of getting wacky extremophiles though!
Would you mind sharing a link to "the xkcd thing" if you have it?
edit: sorry for being lazy, I scrolled a bit more and found it.
Re: A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also read in the XKCD thing that it might be up to about 50° so it's probably a bit uncomfortable for most algae type things. I bet there's some good chance of getting wacky extremophiles though!
Would you mind sharing a link to "the xkcd thing" if you have it? edit: sorry for being lazy, I scrolled a bit more and found it.
Re: A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
#409Why is this interesting? Workers gets injured all the time and sometimes even die on various accidents in all industries and nobody ever talk about it. Is this anti-nuclear propaganda?
Because another mutant might be joining our ranks soon.
Like in Teenage Ninja Turtles?
Sounds cool!
(But you know it's fictional, right?)
Re: A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
#410300 CPM in hair after decontamination is a massive red flag. If this is from systemic circulation, could be GBq-level total body activity. The non-emergency classification is bureaucratic nonsense. This is an internal contamination event with unknown but potentially severe consequences.
300 CPM on its own is both meaningless and not high.
CPM is a raw stat from the sensor. There’s many different designs of dosimeters and they all read differently so you have to ask “what brand and model did you use?” You then apply a function to the data to normalize it into a real unit.
But CPM is the cool thing that makes the click-click-click sound. (The absolute rate of clicks also is not useful.)