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When I worked at Brookhaven National Lab, the sewer system had radiation detectors in it, to ensure there was no improper disposal of radioactive stuff. It was
by jimfl 16y ago
When I worked at Brookhaven National Lab, the sewer system had radiation detectors in it, to ensure there was no improper disposal of radioactive stuff. It was said that it was sensitive enough to detect someone flushing a banana down the toilet.
The Assistant Director of the lab at the time, had had a radionuclide angiography, and I guess the radio marker is emitted in the urine, because he claimed to have set the alarms off after coming back to the lab post-procedure.
- dasil003 16y agoI hear plumbers aren't too fond of that.
- jballanc 16y agoThis reminds me of a story about my wife. She worked in a hot-lab at the time, using P-32, and she was extremely fastidious about using the Geiger counter to ensure she never spilled any material on the bench or equipment. Then, one day she calls me to her lab, and I can tell she's very frantic. I rush up the 3 flights of stairs and into her lab and ask what's wrong. She was worried that she had spilled the raido-isotopes because the Geiger counter was picking up counts all over! The lab bench, the pipettes, the Eppendorf tubes, everything seemed to be hot. I paused for a moment, then took the Geiger counter from her and pointed the probe at her. The needle JUMPED to the max and she turned flush white... ...the day before she had undergone a stress test with a Technetium tracer.
- situationiste 16y agoPossibly apocryphal story that supports the assertions of BED, I read somewhere long ago that the Monticello nuclear power plant sheds less radioactive stuff into the Mississippi river than the water treatment plant 100 miles downriver at Pigs Eye in St. Paul because of flushed medical diagnostic residues. Off topic: around the same time I read that there's a statistically significant difference (a rise) in the level of caffeine in the Mississippi as measured above and below the Twin Cities.