A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool

Post by dekhn » Mon, Oct 27, 2025, 10:07 PM UTC

skeaker wrote: post #521

dekhn wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of us grew up in the time of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl. Combined with a lot of media about radioactivity's dangers ( https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/06/nyregion/babies-teeth-and... ). I think that has strongly affected people's perception of risk. 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_React…

I think for the general population we also have The Simpsons to blame. Ask anyone on the street what "nuclear waste" actually is and I'd wager at least half would say "a barrel with glowing green goo leaking out of it."

Post by lukan » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 6:59 AM UTC

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #372

lukan wrote: post #186

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I would take the advice of a surgeons son, who is also somewhat active in the field, that something sounds fishy about a operation, to further look into it. That is very different from letting him perform the surgery. There is incentive to play down accidents. No idea what happened here, I actually rather think it recived publicity because falling into a nuclear reactor pool sounds way more dramatic than it is, but .…

There is also incentive for people to inflate their sense of importance by weighing in on topics they're not qualified on, especially if it's motivated by a sense of familial pride. You can see elsewhere on this thread that arthurcolle self-admits a lack of familiarity with basic interpretation of CPM. Misinformation, whether ill-intentioned or not, does real and tangible harm to our society. Misinformation about the…

Post by goopypoop » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 8:53 AM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #378

layer8 wrote: post #339

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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.

Post by IAmBroom » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 12:36 PM UTC

dundercoder wrote: post #510

IAmBroom wrote: post #509

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That makes zero sense. Radiation is not a component of water; it is literally photons[0]. In the nanosecond after you fill the glass, all the radiation in it has left the volume. I'd drink it. It's just extremely pure water, with a nuclear flashlight at the bottom of the pool - which no one could see, even if they had gamma-ray glasses on[1], because the water attenuates it so much. [0] Or ions of hydrogen or helium,…

Radiation isn’t contained in the water as photons, but the coolant itself becomes radioactive through neutron activation. Even with intact fuel rods, oxygen in the water turns into N-16 with a half-life of about seven seconds, and trace metals like nickel and cobalt form isotopes such as Co-58 and Co-60. These emit strong gamma radiation while the reactor operates. The primary coolant is not simply pure water; it con…

Post by IAmBroom » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 12:41 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #491

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #414

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I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. See https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ “But just to be sure, I got in touch with a friend of mine who works at a research reactor, and asked him what he thought would happen to you if you tried to swim in their radiation containment pool. “In our reactor?” He thought about it for a moment. “You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.”

...only in the US.