421–430 of 545 posts
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I wouldn't even call it bad. Reactor pools have basically zero radiation at the surface. The water is constantly filtered and kept very pure to remove contaminants that can be activated by neutrons. Even drinking it I would think would be completely fine. The water itself doesn't get activated.
Is it not Heavy Water?
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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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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.
I used to work at UC Berkeley, and one of the buildings on campus previously held a research nuclear reactor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Research_Reactor). There's a sign there now "Nuclear Free Zone"; (https://www.dailycal.org/archives/the-berkeley-nuclear-free-...).
Note that they did have to do extensive decontamination on Gilman Hall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formerly_Utilized_Sites_Remedi...) where plutonium was first isolated.
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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!
Hot spring baths usually top out around 42-43C
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My experience so far has been that when people say "full stop", it usually makes a lot of sense to fact-check further what they said. In this case the notice says his hair is 300 counts per minute after decontamination. The typical background is under 100.
Your fact checking was not successful: there is no typical background expressed in counts. Background count rates vary globally by significant amounts, but importantly, they vary by device. Some devices may get a measly 10-20 counts per minute in a background, next to another device that could get 500. It also matters what kind of radiation the device is configured to detect. At any rate 300 is widely recognizable as…
Of course it varies for "civilian" devices from EBay.
They put that count into NRC report. It means that it has pretty specific calibrated meaning for that regulated environment.
>However, even if we accept 100 as the background CPM value, 300 on 100 does not represent significant contamination in a typical environment (but does imply some occurred).
report mentions 300 clearly as something above normal, whatever normal is there. And that is after decontamination. Clearly the source of contamination - the pool - is much higher than 300.
If my childhood taught me anything, it’s that there’s about to be an awesome superhero.
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TFA says: “The individual was decontaminated by radiation protection personnel but had 300 counts per minute detected in their hair. At 1632 EDT they were sent off site to seek medical attention.” Apparently they do have concerns.
> Apparently they do have concerns. Well yeah. If someone falls in water at work, you get them checked out at the hospital. The paltry amount of radiation is kind of the least of your worries if there's even the smallest risk you got some water in your lungs. People can drown on dry land from about a tablespoon of water getting into their lungs.
Well, I don't think there's such a big risk of that. Falling into a pool is something most of us have probably done. Being pushed by a friend as a kid for example. The risk of drowning is probably pretty comparable to the risk from the radiation (negligible).
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This is such a better response than "wow some people really are stoopid"
I mean, if you actually think there's a pool of "lava" that's dangerously radioactive at the surface, while people are walking right next to it, you might be a bit "stoopid". The whole reason water is used is that it shields from radioactivity pretty well
There are also plenty of jobs where people are in close proximity to insanely hot/dangerous liquids.
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The article seems to indicate that the radiation level in their hair was notably elevated.
Unfortunately, it also provided no useful information quantifying the statements. Maybe there is a problem elsewhere, maybe the pool is contaminated, maybe the sensor used is very sensitive and 300 cpm is not as concerning as it would seem. It sure would be nice to have actual data, wouldn’t it?
Regulatory bodies have adopted the LNT (linear no threshold) model and for good reasons. Every exposure increases your likelihood to get cancer eventually. Many things do, such is life, and radiation is one of them.
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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.