Grand Canyon Visitors May Have Been Exposed To Radiation For Years (azcentral.com) 191
joeflies writes: Park safety manager Elston Stephenson provides details about buckets of uranium that exposed visitors to radiation, and the subsequent cover up. The radiation was detected by a teenager that brought a Geiger counter to the building, and was subsequently "cleaned" up by employees equipped with dish washing gloves and a broken mop handle. "If you were in the Museum Collections Building (2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were 'exposed' to uranium by OSHA's definition," Stephenson wrote. "The radiation readings, at first blush, exceeds (sic) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's safe limits. [...] Identifying who was exposed, and your exposure level, gets tricky and is our next important task." Stephenson said he had repeatedly asked National Park executives to inform the public, but never got a response.
"According to Stephenson, the uranium specimens had been in a basement at park headquarters for decades and were moved to the museum building when it opened, around 2000," reports AZCentral. "One of the buckets was so full that its lid would not close. 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."
"According to Stephenson, the uranium specimens had been in a basement at park headquarters for decades and were moved to the museum building when it opened, around 2000," reports AZCentral. "One of the buckets was so full that its lid would not close. 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."
Explains the reviews (Score:5, Funny)
"The canyon is fantastic! I had an absolutely glowing experience; our tour group lit up with joy."
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NRC 'limits' are so conservatively low you can get many times that exposure with no real world risk.
Re:Explains the reviews (Score:5, Informative)
"The report indicated radiation levels at "13.9 mR/hr" where the buckets were stored."
"The commission lists a maximum safe dosage for the public, beyond natural radiation, is no more than 2 millirems per hour, or 100 per year."
If you spent a day (7-8h) around the bucket then you received your yearly dose. I would feel bad for anyone that worked there and received continuous doses.
Re:Explains the reviews (Score:5, Informative)
https://xkcd.com/radiation/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Explains the reviews (Score:5, Informative)
13.9 mRem is 139 microsieverts. So using that chart, one hour of exposure is somewhere between "Approximate total dose received at Fukushima Town Hall over two weeks following accident" and "EPA yearly release limit for a nuclear power plant". And about a third of "yearly dose from natural potassium in your body". Not great, but it could be a lot worse.
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I prefer the more intuitive "about two round-trip flights between LA and NY."
Re:Explains the reviews (Score:5, Informative)
What all the parent posters and XKCD are missing is that it's not just the dosage, it's the manner of exposure. Temporary exposure to an xray machine stops the moment the machine is turned off. A bucket of uranium specimens may contain dust that can get inside the body. Thus it needs to be handled carefully to avoid that, and in this case it appears that the staff had little idea of what they were doing.
It's the old "banana equivalent dose" fallacy. The body processes and removes excess potassium, but caesium accumulates in certain organs and does long term damage, with the effects only becoming apparent years later.
Re:Explains the reviews (Score:5, Informative)
The report indicated radiation levels at "13.9 mR/hr" where the buckets were stored, and "800 mR/hr" on contact with the ore. Just 5 feet from the buckets, there was a zero reading. The abbreviation, "mR" typically stands for milliroentgen, a measurement roughly equivalent to a millirem, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
So if there was no reading 5 feet from the buckets, then the radiation was most entirely alpha decay. Those buckets must have been hot. The bigger problem is that they left a huge bucket of poison around children. The radiation thing is mostly a scare tactic unless you lived within 5 ft of those buckets. Also, I'm surprised they gave the units of measure they did. If they had used effective dose (Sieverts) it would have been 20x higher and much more scary.
Re:Explains the reviews (Score:5, Informative)
Well, yes. Uranium is an alpha emitter. You can generally protect yourself quite well from radiation from natural uranium (not enriched uranium) by, well, wearing clothes. If worse comes to worst, holding a piece of paper between you and the uranium would be sufficient. Or wrapping the uranium in a couple layers of decent quality toilet tissue....
Re:Explains the reviews (Score:5, Insightful)
Trans-Uranic elements from U decay actually emit alpha, beta and gamma. You know nothing about this. An unsealed container was accessible by anyone for over 20 years, and one microgram in your lungs is deadly potentially.
You're a moron. Not potentially, you're a moron.
There are actually very few gamma emitters in general. Almost all radioactive decay is alpha and beta. And there are no gamma emitters in U-238 or U-235's decay chains. There are however different isotopes of Uranium that do emit gamma radiation but those usually have to be made in a reactor and can't be made from natural Uranium ore (no matter how much reprocessing you do to it). And Uranium's real hazard is that its poisonous, as in like Arsenic and unlike Thorium which is inert. The radioactivity is just window dressing here. The GP is right, alpha radiation isn't really a hazard as its blocked by clothes and is in sunlight. You can't even write one accurate sentence about this topic, maybe you should stop posting about it and clearly you shouldn't be throwing insults at others when its you are the uninformed and ignorant person here.
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The GP is correct, uranium dust particles are dangerous. If they get in your lungs then your clothes or a sheet of paper won't help you. Note that your lungs are not normally exposed to sunlight either.
That's the problem here. They had buckets of the stuff lying around, one without the lid even on it. Properly handled it can be safe, but it wasn't properly handled.
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The GP is correct, uranium dust particles are dangerous. If they get in your lungs then your clothes or a sheet of paper won't help you. Note that your lungs are not normally exposed to sunlight either.
That's the problem here. They had buckets of the stuff lying around, one without the lid even on it. Properly handled it can be safe, but it wasn't properly handled.
Yes the dust is dangerous, but not because of the alpha radiation. It kills you in your example due to poisoning (you can inhale poison), not cancer, radiation poisoning or tissue destruction. It was basically a big bucket of poison sitting around in a public place where children play, that's bad. The extra danger from the alpha radiation is probably not worth thinking about here as it doesn't really matter and is only mentioned to stir up more hysteria. That's what we are tired of seeing. Just because
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Thorium however is not "inert" and that nothing statement is false, but I still know what you meant.
Thorium is biologically inert because its not water soluble. So its unable to take part in any sort of biological reaction with tissue. Its not a noble element but that's a moot point. Also, alpha radiation is blocked by most things including clothing, the bucket in the article, sunscreen, air, water, and most other subsistences. The reason why we are so hard on you on this point is that you can use alpha radiation to really manipulate the amount of radiation you announce. It there is a lot of it, it m
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Looks like your link (apparently from a romance language) is about ingesting alpha emitters, which is a Bad Idea. Keep them out of the body and they're far less dangerous.
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You are confusing elements created in a reactor from enhancing the neutron flux and introducing various materials to capture those neutrons with natural decay products. There was a completely different process happening in these buckets than you would see in a reactor.
The U-238 decay chain [wikipedia.org] doesn't have a single gamma emitter in it. It's all alpha and beta decay. And by the way, neither does U-235 [wikipedia.org].
The most common emitter of gamma from nuclear decay is Cobalt-60 which is an artificially made isotope create
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Uranium fever has gone and got me down.
Uranium fever is spreadin' all around--
With a geiger counter in my hand, I got dosed on some government land--
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NRC limits are extremely conservative. While doses to the public are set at 100 mrem/year radiation workers are allowed upto 6 Rem a year for their entire working lifetime. These levels are set to be below the damage threshold.
At these levels it is likely no harm was experience by any member of the public, who would have received less than 7 mrem total dose in a 30 minute period. (For gamma radiation 1 R equals 1 rem.) Even if they visited several times over multiple years.
It might be different for National
Re:Explains the reviews (Score:4, Informative)
This was 4000 times the safe limit for exposure in 30 minutes.
No, it is 4000 times the federal regulatory limit, which is way lower than the safe limit because of all the extra caution and margins of error built into the federal regulations.
This was naturally occurring uranium ore. If you don't ingest it, and you have enough ventilation to prevent radon build up, it isn't that dangerous.
Thanks for Correcting the Record (Score:2)
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"Just in case i wasn't positive enough about paid shilling in this thread, here comes ShanghaiBill to relieve my doubts."
Learning, knowledge and understanding are excellent tools for reliving ignorant doubts. Researching a topic is generally a much better plan than making baseless claims such as calling a person is a "shill".
Alpha particles are stopped by a few inches of air, paper, your epidermis. They're only dangerous if an emitter is lodged inside the body (lungs for example), where the alpha particles
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One of the buckets wasn't even closed because it was too full to close. Pretending 600x-4000x the SAFE LIMIT for exposure to developing children is "no big deal" is ignorance right from the source. The room was contaminated.
Assuming no children in 20 years either came near enough the open bucket to disturb it, or god help them if they grabbed a handfull of dirt to throw at Billy... you attempting to downplay this stuff continually amazes. You're sick.
Your first motivation should be to try to find out what happened, not blather bullshit about how it's no big deal when you don't even know about it yet. Specimen-grade Uranium chunks are actually very radioactive.
Your apologism may vary.
You should take some time to learn about radiation risk rather than preaching ignorantly at someone who has.
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"Just 5 feet from the buckets, there was a zero reading"
Too bad you don't know shit about alpha decay, which this clearly was.
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Getting even a single microgram of alpha emitters in your lung is potentially fatal.
Getting a microgram of plutonium in your lung can kill you. Natural uranium is less radioactive than plutonium by a factor of 160,000. Also, uranium ore is typically about 0.1% U3O8. The other 99.9% is mostly harmless silicates.
Re:Explains the reviews (Score:4, Informative)
I think he's just trying to keep things in perspective. This wasn't a bundle of plutonium rods, it was naturally occurring radioactive rocks. They look like rocks, they feel like rocks, and they're only slightly more dangerous than any other rocks. I guess it's a good thing no kid threw one at another kid, because that would be more harmful.
It is best that they were moved away but if you're picturing a glowing green bucket with radiation symbols on it, you're over-imagining.
As for NRC limits, a single CT scan exceeds those.
Apparently, the person raising the alarm here has a history of blowing things out of proportion.
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Fact, breathing a single microgram could kill you. Hundreds of thousands of children went through there over 20 years. Hundreds of thousands.
Alright then, let's have it your way.
How many of those children died?
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Fact, breathing a single microgram could kill you.
There's that panicy overblowing thing again. First, read this [forbes.com]. Note how 30 years later, he's fine after handling the rock and keeping it in his room for a year. If half an hour was 4000 times the limit, this kid got 70 million times the limit or more (since he actually crumbled it in his hands)..
Again, it was best to remove the uranium rocks, but it is doubtful that any harm has been done.
I say this as one of millions of people who have had radioactive materials directly injected into a vein.
Read very caref
"Radiation is good for you" (Score:1, Offtopic)
That's what Ann Coulter says and I believe her. I rilly do.
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Some people are able to absorb energy from broadcast radiation... but too much causes cancer... but cancer can be solved by the right dose of more radiation.
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A treatment isn't a cure you apologist faggot
Thanks for raising the standard of discussion around here, anonymous couward!
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more likely Ann Coulter would rail against government incompetence and the dishonesty of career government bureaucrats. Because you know, that's basically what happened here.
Only low and constant levels. (Score:3, Interesting)
"Radiation is good for you" That's what Ann Coulter says and I believe her. I rilly do.
Actually (presuming your genetics is typical of the population and you don't already live on a high mountain, in an otherwise high radiation area, or spend much of your time on airliners in flight), a low level of additional ionizing radiation IS good for you.
(Not pulses, like chest X-rays or radiation therapy, though. And not high levels of bio-binding or concentrated particulate radioactive material, like radio-iodin
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Actually (presuming your genetics is typical of the population and you don't already live on a high mountain, in an otherwise high radiation area, or spend much of your time on airliners in flight), a low level of additional ionizing radiation IS good for you.
Do you have a source for this? A bit of googling turned up nothing to support it, and quite a bit from scientists who disagree, including this paper: https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org] Excerpt (emphasis mine): "High doses of ionizing radiation clearly produce deleterious consequences in humans, including, but not exclusively, cancer induction. At very low radiation doses the situation is much less clear... First, what is the lowest dose of x- or y-radiation for which good evidence exists of increased cancer
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If it weren't for radiation, where we live would be a very cold, lifeless chunk of rock.
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This is not the scientific consensus. The scientific consensus is that ionizing radiation is harmful at any level and this has been demonstrated even for very low doses. For example, in this study which demonstrated the risk of leukemia and brain tumors from CT scans in childhood (published in the Lancet, no less): https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
Of course, as others have pointed out. the chemical risks from uranium are much higher than the radiological risks which are very low, but this does not change th
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Also background radiation is - of course - believed to *increase* cancer risk: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Your 'thermostat theory' does not make sense to me and I have never read about this in the scientific literature. Obviously, if it would be healthier to produce "protective-molecules" evolution would cause production to increase even without additional radiation until the overall optimum (considering all trade-offs) is reached. Why additional radiation should then be helpful is beyond my understa
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You are right that such effects could make sense in a different context. When I say the argument does not make sense to me I mean that there is no inherent reason why it should apply here. It is just an arbitrary story which could be true in theory when knowing nothing about the specific situation, but there is no compelling reason to believe it is true in this context. And in fact it is not what scientist believe to be true.
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You are an idiot.
Ad hominem! I WIN!
Why don't you read a book about the topic?
Why don't you suggest one, and summarize its conclusions, if you really DO have something well researched that debunks the above assertions.
"The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
(I presume that's just your sig line, and you're not actually suggesting a piece of science fiction as part of your argument.)
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Ad hominem! I WIN!
No, you lose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I stated a fact, you are an idiot. But I accept if you feel insulted. However I did not use an ad hominem fallacy :P
Ad Hominem vs. Name Calling. (Score:2)
Normally I don't agree with the strong distinction Grahm makes between name calling and ad hominem. But if we go strictly by his hierarchy:
You are an idiot.
Name calling. I WIN!
Why don't you read a book about the topic?
Ad hominem!
The whole area is uranium (Score:4, Informative)
You can pick up uranium ore of the ground, it gets stuck in your shoe and sets off sensors at the airport, it's a nuisance but it's not 'dangerous', people get more radiation working a few months on the ISS and I don't see Scott Kelly dying of radiation sickness or cancer.
Moreover this was (according to the article) kept in a bucket. Any harmful radiation from these sources can be held back by a sheet of paper.
Alpha (Score:5, Informative)
Uranium gives off alpha radiation, which is effectively stopped by the layer of dead skin cells on your body. If you ground it up into a talcum-powder consistency and snorted it, then you'd be in trouble, but anything less than that and you're fine.
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When I was in high school my science teacher passed around a sample of uranium in a sealed transparent container that resembled a hollow acrylic cylinder. Handling it, you could tell from how the weight distribution changed as you tipped the cylinder from one side to the other so that the small rock would move inside to one edge that the container itself was very light, but I'll never forget how that tiny rock, itself resembling a more or less ordinary grey pebble barely more than a couple of cm across at
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Uranium decays through alpha emission. You can block the radiation with tissue paper (or a layer of dead skin cells). The cylinder was probably acrylic, because it's cheap, transparent, and doesn't break easily.
Re:Alpha (Score:5, Informative)
That said, this was uranium ore, which is typically only about 0.1% uranium [nmt.edu]. Uranium and its decay products have a radioactivity of 12,356 Bq (decays per second) per gram, so you'd expect ore to be about 12.4 Bq per gram.
In contrast, potassium chloride [cns-snc.ca] is commonly used as a salt substitute in low-sodium salt products. It's about 0.0118% naturally-occurring K-40, which is radioactive (beta radiation even). That gives potassium a radioactivity of about 0.032 Bq/mg = 32 Bq per gram
So the exposure visitors got from these buckets of uranium ore was probably less than you get walking past the water softener bags in the supermarket. In fact, looking at the table on page 2 of the potassium chloride link, you'd expect baked potatoes, milk, orange juice, bananas, hamburgers, and roast chicken to be more radioactive (gram per gram) than these buckets of uranium ore.
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That's true, but a plastic bucket is a pretty effective beta absorber. The bucket with the loose lid would have let a bit more out.
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The decay chain of U-238 [wikipedia.org] includes many isotopes which give off beta and gamma radiation. Most of that energy is given off via alpha particles. But it's not true that a sheet of paper or your dead skin cells will block all if it.
Not quite. Its mostly alpha and beta emitters but no gamma emitters. That's why its not really so dangerous. Before it hurts you, you would get a sunburn. and probably move away. For the gamma emitters you are probably thinking of U-232 which is Uranium's answer to Pu-238. It glows red hot in high purities. It also matters what else is in the ore. If its U-238 decay products, its likely a lot more radioactive than your estimate because those decay products have much shorter half-lives than U-238 and
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"That said, this was uranium ore" Wrong. This was specimen grade Uranium ore. Its actual %U is unknown, but it emitted far more than your 32 Bq, lying moron.
And there's no "sheet of paper" stopping alpha particles in your lungs, where the dust from these open containers went over the course of 20 years, along with Radon gas and other nasty TU's.
Apologist faggots like you need to die under heavy ion bombardment to really understand the forces you're downplaying so casually and thoughtlessly.
First, Radon isn't a TU. Second, the danger here was from poison, not from ionizing radiation. If you breathed enough of this dust to hurt yourself from the alpha radiation, you would poison yourself first. Uranium is dangerous. Just not in the way you keep saying. Its a poison and quite an effective one at that. Its a poison like Arsenic and that's partially because Uranium is water soluble. However, all naturally occurring isotopes of Uranium have very long half-lives. Long half-live means less ra
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While following this thread, a thought occurred to me: Does that method of argument really work for you? Calling everyone moron, retard, faggot, saying they should be buried in radioactive dust: Is this effective in your daily discussions?
I'm guessing not.
I'm guessing you're like the guy on Office Space, everyone keeps stealing his red stapler, and now he's gonna quietly burn down the office- and still won't get any respect.
Your arguments are more effective when you don't present yourself like the crazy guy
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It also gives out neutron radiation ... which is not stopped by a sheet of paper.
Idiot ...
No, no it doesn't. For that to happen you would need very special circumstances that reactors create. Neutronic radiation requires fission. Naturally occurring fission requires a moderator and unless the bucket was left out in the rain plus a bunch of other things that weren't true in this case it didn't happen. Perhaps a single fission or 2 occurred over many years but no chain reaction and the neutrons were probably absorbed before they left the material as most of the Uranium in that bucket was U-238
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Perhaps you want to read how a fission bomb works ... it has no moderator.
Perhaps you want to read how a fission reactor works ... how does he moderator magically create neutrons? Hint: it does not.
And no, i don't give you the wiki link that tells you how a reactor is started ...
Learn something before hurling insults. :D, idiot.
It is not an insult if I state a fact. Albeit you might feel insulted
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Perhaps you should learn that fuel for bombs and nuclear reactors is enriched or highly enriched. Normal unenriched ore effectively has no chance of producing fission (neutron) events.
Knowledge is a great thing to have before calling other people "idiot".
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Rofl
Yes it has.
What the fuck would have enrichment to do wit it?
And: the neutrons don't come from fission, that should be obvious. Don't you learn anything in physics anymore?
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"What the fuck would have enrichment to do wit it?"
You clearly don't understand what "enrichment" is. Uranium ore is not pure Uranium nor is it a single isotope. Enrichment refers in increasing the percentage of U-235. In natural equilibrium, PURE Uranium is 0.720% U-235. 99.274% is U-238, which is NOT fissionable.
Ore is rarely more than a few percent Uranium. Therefore, what your hubris is blinding you from seeing is in ore, the fissionable isotope of Uranium is 0.720% of 3% total Uranium.
Neutron emitt
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And, you still fail to explain why enrichment changes the neutron emission of uranium.
Probably because you still think there is none, facepalm.
I learned plenty in physics. Clearly, you failed.
Obviously not.
Perhaps you want to explain to me "critical mass" and why a bunch of Uranium or Plutonium goes boom when you reach "critical mass" ?
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"And, you still fail to explain why enrichment changes the neutron emission of uranium."
No, you failed to comprehend the explanation. Neutron emitting natural fission events in unenriched uranium are rare. Even moreso in ore. Google it bro.
"Probably because you still think there is none, facepalm."
No, I specifically stated the neutron flux is so low as to be irrelevant from the standpoint of health physics. I never said zero Again, re-read.
"I learned plenty in physics. Clearly, you failed.
Obviously not."
Yet
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Uranium and plutonium don't go boom with critical mass. They melt down. They only go boom with critical mass in tight containment, and nuclear weapons include a neutron emitter to make sure the chain reaction starts.
Not to mention that U-238, which is almost all naturally occurring uranium, doesn't have a critical mass. If it was capable of going critical, everyone in WWII would have had nukes.
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Uranium and plutonium don't go boom with critical mass.
Yes, they do. That is how nuclear bombs work.
They only go boom with critical mass in tight containment,
Nitpicking? Obviously if they separate to quickly you have not much yield, hence the containment.
nuclear weapons include a neutron emitter to make sure the chain reaction starts. ... fission bombs don't need it. Read again: critical mass.
Fusion bombs
Not to mention that U-238, which is almost all naturally occurring uranium, doesn't have a critical mas
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No, I specifically stated the neutron flux is so low as to be irrelevant from the standpoint of health physics. I never said zero Again, re-read.
No, you did not.
Critical mass is when neutron capture is high enough that fission events and the neutrons they produce are captured by other nuclei, creating additional events. This is not possible in UNENRICHED URANIUM.
You seem to like to play with words. My hint towards "critical mass" was that there is a neutron flux. A natural one. Obviously that has nothing t
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You've utterly failed to understand that neutron emissions from Uranium ore are from natural fission events, which on the balance, are rare compared to alpha and beta. This, on top of Uranium's immense half life (hint: it decays quite slowly).
I'm not going to go into fast, slow and thermal neutrons, delayed vs prompt, because it will clearly sail over your head.
Enjoy the hubris.
Ohm, I should have read the rest of your comment before answering.
You are obviously an complete idiot.
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Free neutrons are the result of fission events. Natural fission events are relatively rare in natural, unenriched Uranium.
"For naturally occurring thorium-232, uranium-235, and uranium-238, spontaneous fission does occur rarely, but in the vast majority of the radioactive decay of these atoms, alpha decay or beta decay occurs instead. Hence, the spontaneous fission of these isotopes is usually negligible, except in using the exact branching ratios when finding the radioactivity of a sample of these element
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Rofl, you still not get it.
Hint: how does a fission reactor start up?
You are an idiot. Trying to cite wikipedia articles without grasping about what you are talking.
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Fission reactors use the free neutrons emitted by the ENRICHED URANIUM. As previously mentioned, ore is not enriched and neutron emitting events are rare.
Not only are you arrogant, you're apparently illiterate as well. Read the link
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As previously mentioned, ore is not enriched and neutron emitting events are rare. ... that does not mean they are not there. You have millions per second.
Obviously they are "relatively rare"
Not only are you arrogant, you're apparently illiterate as well. Read the link :D
There is no link in your post
Lawsuits and happenstance (Score:2)
There will be some lawsuits coming out of this, as the plaintiff qualifications should only include had cancer and visited the Grand Canyon in the last 18 years.
This is unfortunate, idiotic, careless, and unlikely malevolent... mostly just dumb luck of the bad variety. To put it in perspective, there are likely millions of American homes with unhealthy levels of carcinogenic radon gas.
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the plaintiff qualifications should only include had cancer and visited the Grand Canyon in the last 18 years.
Anyone can sue, whatever their qualifications, but winning is going to require showing that it's more likely than not that Grand Canyon caused them harm. Staff or anyone else who had many days of exposure might have a chance but nobody else will, not unless there's somehow a mass outbreak of cancer that can be linked to visiting.
Oops (Score:2)
And I thought I only got exposed during my work in smelters and military missions.
Oh well.
Exposure 600x federal guidelines? (Score:3)
I'm not understanding the flippant comments here. It certainly seems significant that children were receiving at least 600 *times* the radiation guidelines.
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From TFA
The report indicated radiation levels at "13.9 mR/hr" where the buckets were stored, and "800 mR/hr" on contact with the ore. Just 5 feet from the buckets, there was a zero reading.
Unless the kids were sitting on the buckets they are fine.
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I don't think the comments are flippant. Some people want to overestimate the potential damage here because:RADIATION. When the true hazard is heavy metal poisoning, but only if ingested, which is unlikely
The radiation guidelines are more than 6000 less than a level which can cause actual damage. As a matter of fact the most significant reasons levels are so low is the potential damage to unborn fetuses, which are much more susceptible to damage from radiation than even children.
Initially I wrote about how
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Some people view any suggestion that radiation or radioactive material may be dangerous as an attack on their favourite unfairly maligned tech - nuclear power.
They are convinced that if people would just wake up and realize that radiation wasn't dangerous and actually it's fine to live next door to Chernobyl now we would see a nuclear renascence. Also most of the costs associated with the technology are due to radiation fearing NIMBYs, who would otherwise be happy to have a great big power station built nex
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That argument goes both ways.
Some people are so hardcore to defend nuclear power, they'll ignore any excessive amount.
Others, are so against nuclear power that they'll scream at a normal daily reading.
You often see this with the term "chemicals" as well.
kudos (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"a trend of citizen radiation hunters:" - God no. The last thing we need is morons wandering around with geiger counters clicking away with zero idea of the concepts of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, dosage, background radiation etc.
Anyway what kind of teen walks around with a Geiger counter ? When I was a teen the only thing I walked around with was a semi-permanent erection...
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Erection (Score:2)
When I was a teen the only thing I walked around with was a semi-permanent erection...
Was it ionizing?
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With the proper software you can already used the camera's CCD to detect radiation. After all the only difference between the photons the camera captures for photographs and the photons of gamma radiation is the energy of the gammas.
https://phys.org/news/2014-06-smartphone-detector-app-positive.html
Re: (Score:2)
So pick up one of these and walk around with it. It doesn't work well unless the levels are ready to kill you, but it certainly freaks people out.
https://www.sportsmansguide.co... [sportsmansguide.com]
buckets of uranium (Score:5, Funny)
weasel words (Score:1)
Superpowers (Score:2)
So the nation will inevitably be swept with a wave of Generation Z kids with superpowers?
Everything I ever needed to know about radiation I learned from comic books. /s
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You, and Godzilla, unless you are Godzilla, which renders moot my settled belief set regarding his/your ability to pay for internet and type legibly with those little dinosaur hands.
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(the buckets have been there since 2000 so many millennials were exposed.)
Bad measurement? (Score:2)
A 10 kilogram bucket of "good" uranium ore should put out about 400 nanosieverts per hour.
The report seems to suggest about 2,000 times that.
So they either got some actual nuclear waste - or someone had the Geiger counter set wrong.
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That's why (Score:4, Funny)
That's probably why it always felt so gosh darn warm and cozy in there.
But seriously, I question the accuracy of the article....you'd have to be using some sort of processed uranium to get the level of radioactivity claimed, you won't get that from common ore specimens.
Geiger counter! (Score:1)
The one cell phone plug in you will never see in popular use. People would die if they saw how much radiation they are exposed to everywhere.
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I have a Pocket Geiger that plugs into a phone, originally developed as low-cost radiation monitor for people in the Fukushima region.
I was rather disappointed to see how little radioactivity it could find around where I live.
The device uses a semiconductor sensor that is not very sensitive; you have to let it count for a while at a few clicks per minute. Also, I learned that it is calibrated for ~1 MeV gamma rays from Cs-137 and Sr-60 (the ones that are most bothersome around nuclear incidents). It will re
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Also, spmewhere on the usgs website is a map of pretty much every hole dug for comercial mineral purposes, might help you find interedting places to play with your geiger counter.
Edit: found the map
https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ [usgs.gov]
Can’t recall (Score:2)
Everyone's overlooking my favorite part (Score:2)
After dumping the contents, the employees brought back the buckets. Certainly don't want to waste a good bucket.
Seriously though, some of these questions could have been answered if the people involved hadn't rushed to cover everything up. Also I notice nobody's talking about the significant levels of rad
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Radon is only a problem where there is little airflow. Basements, primarily.
Health physics is complicated, teens aren't (Score:2)
"So they either got some actual nuclear waste - or someone had the Geiger counter set wrong."
It's almost assuredly the latter. Geiger-Mueller tubes cannot discriminate energy levels or the difference between alpha, beta or Gamma radiation except to use different shield materials to filter out alpha, then beta.
G-M counters are also wildly inaccurate at providing dose rates unless shielded for gamma only energy compensation. Dose rates are calculated in terms of Gamma against a known standard such as Cesium 1
It's The RADIOACTIVE MOUNTAINS!!! (Score:2)
There are houses in Colorado - all through the West, actually - that are radioactive, because they were built with concrete from gravel that contains low-level radioactive ores. That's why radon is such a problem; the radioactive gravel (with slight traces of thorium, probably) which decays, with radon as one of the decay stages. And since it's a heavy gas, it settles in basements.
LONG term exposure can cause cancers, but in much of the West, the ground itself is radioactive. And always has been.
Dear TDS Nutter (Score:1)
My car didn't start this morning.
Is there any way I can implicate Trump in causing this?
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