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Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years

155 points by _bxg1 8y ago

ams6110 8y ago
Pretty lacking on specifics. What was the actual radiation level measured? I would assume these were not buckets of pure uranium, but of uranium ore that is naturally all over the place in the West, and not terribly radioactive in its natural state.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  True, it was a little vague. They mentioned the measured levels after the bucket was removed, but not before.
  - snazz 8y ago
    There is one quote that leads the reader to believe that the radiation was pretty strong: > at levels he calculated to be 1,400 times the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's safe level for children. Note that it doesn’t mention the timeframe that the children would have to be exposed to the buckets to get that number. It mentions 30 minutes earlier, but it’s unclear whether 30 minutes was used to get the “1400 times” figure.
    - tomatotomato37 8y ago
      Yeah, I've always found vague calculations of radiation exposure like this to be highly inaccurate, mostly because people can't into inverse square law and fuck up the units. I'll wait until the OSHA investigation to reveal more accurate information; my opinion is that it's the lifelong employees who hung around the area who should actually be worried, instead of some kid who went on a field trip there six years ago.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  * 800 mR/hr if you physically touched the rocks * 280-320 mR/hr if you physically touched the bucket(s) * 13.9 mR/hr if you were within 5 ft * 1.85 mR/hr inside the building more than 5 feet away. Also can be thought of as "0 mR/hr above background" * 2.02 mR/hr outside, in the park, on a bright sunny day. 2.02 is "background". i.e. the levels everyone is getting from natural sources outside. 13.9 mR/hr is 139 microsievert (µSv) per hour So, really its that being near the buckets was 139 µSv/hr. A child would get ~70 µSv in that half hour, in theory. If we believe Randall Munroe's (of xkcd fame) sourcing in https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/, then that means the kid got less than a round-trip flight from NY to LA sitting there for 30 minutes. "1400 times" sounds like one heck of a scare tactic. Not saying this was smart, but its overly alarmist. Numbers are from a picture I found. Scroll down a section on "Takeaways from the report" where it summarizes the exposure. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2876435002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    You do get a lot more exposure if you’re working at the museum every day though.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      Only if you spent hours within 5 feet of the bucket. (That's what the comparison with sunlight is aboot)
      - tinus_hn 8y ago
        They are cumulative, if you walk around the museum every day you could easily rack up hours with 5 feet.
    - dmckeon 8y ago
      Note that the South Rim of GCNP is at 7,000 feet (2100m) elevation. Also, next week, Feb 26, GCNP is 100 years old.
- trimbo 8y ago
  From a screenshot at [1] * 800 mR/hr if you touched the ore * 280 mR/hr on the surface of the bucket (sealed) * "0 above background" if you were 5 ft away from the bucket * 2.5 mR/hr if you were touching the cabinet it was in [1] - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2876435002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...
  - gotocake 8y ago
    Basically unless you were having a very prolonged and loving relationship with the bucket, you were exposed to nothing of consequence. That doesn’t excuse the morons who kept this stuff, and if a kid took a souvenir home or there had been a fire it could have been a lot worse. They may have also had unacceptable levels of radon. If I worked there I’d want to know more, but just as a visitor I’d shrug and get on with life. I’m wondering why they used R instead of Sv though. It’s a single source with a single quality factor, and were only concerned with the impact on humans.
    - sandwall 8y ago
      Roentgens are historical units of exposure, it's simply what a lot of older meters read. Roentgens can be assumed to safely equal RADs (although they don't, conversion is less than 1 for kV), the historical unit for "Radiation Absorbed Dose." For photons this would be equal to REM "Radiation Equivalent Man." All old units; conversion to S.I., 100 rad = 1 Gray (J/Kg), 100 rem = 1 Sievert. Essentially, who ever wrote the report was old and conservative. The occupational risk is also essentially nil. This is much ado about nada.
      - your-nanny 8y ago
        assuming inhalation if dust was not an issue..
        dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        5gal buckets are designed to be handled by all manner of people who don't have enough time to give a crap and still get to their destination without leaking. A properly sealed 5gal bucket will remain air tight even if it's bouncing around inside a tote in the bed of a truck on rural gravel roads for ~10mo (the tote flooded at some point but the bucket wound up dry). Sitting in a cabinet the risk of dust making it out of the bucket would have been nonexistent so long as the lid was on it.
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago
  >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. >The Nuclear Regulatory Commission measures radiation contamination in millisieverts per hour or per year. According to Stephenson, close exposures to the uranium buckets could have exposed adults to 400 times the health limit — and children to 4,000 times what is considered safe. https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2905358002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2019/02/18/grand-...
ChuckMcM 8y ago
If they had just let them sit there for 4 and a half billion years they would be half gone :-). If you hike around the Grand Canyon you are going to be exposed to Uranium. There are a lot of mines in and around the place (see here: https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/grand-canyon-uranium https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/grand-canyon-uranium). It really isn't something to worry about unless you want to live their and/or eat food that has been contaminated.
hirundo 8y ago
Depending on the radiation level the public may have benefited via radiation hormesis. With only the given data it's hard to know if this was a net health menace or boon.
- jhayward 8y ago
  The radiation hormesis theory[1] isn't widely accepted and shouldn't be used as a policy mechanism until there is much more known about its legitimacy and limitations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
  - pfdietz 8y ago
    Also, if one abandons the idea that dose response is linear, there is the possibility that the slope is even larger in the low dose regime than LNT would predict. The conservative approach would then be to adopt stricter limits, not looser ones.
    - sandwall 8y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6043938/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6043938/
      - pfdietz 8y ago
        Nothing there contradicts what I wrote. The notion seems to be the alternative to LNT is "radiation is not as bad at low doses as LNT". But there are many alternatives, all consistent with the evidence, and some would have the effect at low doses be worse. Radiation is not a criminal defendant that requires proof beyond reasonable doubt to be regulated.
        acidburnNSA 8y ago
        Expensively regulating something well below any detectable effect could have negative consequences regardless of whether or not it is a criminal defendant. For instance, nuclear power plants are very nearly carbon free, yet they're expensive in part because of the Linear No-Threshold model of radiation dose at very low doses. If they were cheaper and we were fully decarbonized in 1995, we could avoid the other more detectable effects of global warming.
mirimir 8y ago
Years ago, I was working in a biochem lab, and helping a state senator's staff draft legislation. The state capitol building was classic granite and marble. So one day, I brought in a Geiger counter. Everyone freaked ;)
- trumped 8y ago
  did you test your kitchen counter?
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Well, at that point, my kitchen counter was Formica over plywood, so not much of a radiation source. But I did test my wife's Mexican pottery, and some pretty enamelwork and art glass. Freaked her too ;) But yes, much granite does contain substantial K-40 (as do we) and some (probably less than 10%) is a substantial source of radon. Also thoron, but it's too short-lived to accumulate. You can buy test kits designed to measure radon production rate from surfaces. The radon gets captured on activated charcoal. You return the kit(s) to the provider, and they send you results.
ratsbane 8y ago
Which takes me back to a shower thought I had a long time ago: How do you know you don't need a geiger counter unless you have one?
- TheSoftwareGuy 8y ago
  Somebody else has one? Realistically though most things aren’t radioactive in a meaningful way.
  - ratsbane 8y ago
    Yep! I carry a Gamma Scout in my car: https://www.gamma-scout.com/EN/GammaFAQ.php https://www.gamma-scout.com/EN/GammaFAQ.php
- car 8y ago
  I had the same thought, and wanted to check some strange ore from the desert. Eventually I soldered my own Geiger counter, thanks to the fabulous Safecast project. This is it: https://blog.safecast.org/bgeigie-nano/ https://blog.safecast.org/bgeigie-nano/ It cost ~$650, but that's because it uses a very high-end geiger tube, and can detect alpha and beta in addition to gamma radiation. Comparable commercial devices do apparently cost a couple thousand. Low and behold, the desert rocks weren't radioactive. However, taking the counter on an airplane was quite shocking, and gave the cabin crew real concern.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    > ...taking the counter on an airplane was quite shocking, and gave the cabin crew real concern. Concern about radiation exposure or concern about the mysterious-looking device you whipped out mid flight? ;)
  - ratsbane 8y ago
    I hadn't heard of Safecast before. Very interesting! Nice data sets there, too.
gumby 8y ago
I remember visiting the Toronto science centre in the 1970s and just pickingup a block of uranium for comparison with a block of aluminium and perhaps other ones. They wanted to teach kids about density. Glad they didn't use plutonium, which is toxic!
- userbinator 8y ago
  Uranium is toxic too, but I bet that was depleted uranium, which isn't all that radioactive and the bigger danger is its regular toxicity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    Can any of the down voters add a comment? Is this inaccurate?
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      I didn't downvote, but I was surprised to read in that link that "DU used in US munitions has 60% of the radioactivity of natural uranium". I knew already that the US fired a lot of it at Iraqis not long ago and it's still killing them. That wiki page links to this 2013 story: "Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. ..."My colleagues and I have all noticed an increase in Fallujah of congenital malformations, sterility, and infertility," he said. ... the Fallujah health crisis represented "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied". ... Doctors in Fallujah are continuing to witness the aforementioned steep rise in severe congenital birth defects, including children being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems. Today in Fallujah,...many families are too scared to have children..." https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/2013315171951838638.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/201331517...
sandwall 8y ago
As correctly pointed out by other readers, this is a non-issue and complete overreaction. All feeding into misconceptions and irrational fear of radiation. The "safety professional" was out of his depth and clearly undereducated about the risks of radiation and uranium ore in particular. Hence, the true risk of a "dirty bomb" -- is psychological, i.e. it would be a weapon of mass disruption (not destruction), triaging a "worried well" would be expensive and time consuming.
- Terr_ 8y ago
  > Hence, the true risk of a "dirty bomb" -- is psychological I imagine there are some radiation-sources which are harmless outside the body because the dead cells of your skin would easily absorb and block them, but would wreak havoc if they were ingested or inhaled as dust. Sometimes this is presented as a question where you have three or four cookies, which emit things like alpha/beta/gamma radiation and possibly neutrons, and you have to decide which cookie to eat, which to put into your pocket, which to put in a lead box, etc.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- xkcd-sucks 8y ago
  Given everything people say about the 2008 crash, destroying the housing market in a few key places seems like it would have a bigger effect than outright killing a few hundred people, unless it's a made-for-television spectacle like the WTC. Dirty bombs are totally a weapon against real estate prices lol
- Spooky23 8y ago
  On a purely radiation focused scale, sure. But this is a big deal, as it’s an indicator of the lack of effective management and controls surrounding it. Where did it come from? Why was it stored where it was stored? Why did employees just dump the material?
  - deleted 8y ago
js2 8y ago
Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19195087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19195087 Not nearly as interesting as the radioactive boyscout story: https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scout/ https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scou... David Hahn sadly passed away at 39: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioactive-boy-scout-died-at-age-39/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioa...
- rocky1138 8y ago
  It would be amazing and not unlike his character to have staged his death.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  The boysout and the smoke detector nuclear experiment is one of those really amazing and interesting stories. Geeze, I wanted to look up him, thinking he'd have gotten an engineering scholarship or something. Looks like he served in the military, but afterwards he got addicted to drugs and died in his late 30s. ... .. Geeze that's fucking tragic.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
austincheney 8y ago
Uranium ore is mostly alpha particle radiation. Clothing and aluminum foil are generally sufficient to block alpha particle radiation. Uranium metal can be up 28% beta particle, which can be blocked by sandbags or a thick brick wall. Depleted uranium contains almost no beta particle radiation. Uranium ore lacks the purity of uranium metal and usually more beta particles than depleted unranium but not much more though it’s purity and composition are naturally variant. Because of that uranium is radioactive and that radioactivity is harmful, but is not the primary harm, unless you are allergic to uranium at which point the radiation is the primary harm. Also, sensitivity to radiation varies wildly by person. Uranium is a high density metal that has some dissolution capability into water, like lead, which means heavy metal poisoning. Uranium is more dense than lead and thus more poisonous but less poisonous than osmium. Under certain conditions uranium can be (or become) very brittle and break apart into a fine dust that can be respirated.
- monochromatic 8y ago
  > Uranium is more dense than lead and thus more poisonous I think there’s a little more to heavy metal toxicity than that...
  - austincheney 8y ago
    How so?
    - tco03 8y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_toxicity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_toxicity It appears as there if is little correlation between metal density and toxicity
      - austincheney 8y ago
        Weird, your source says the opposite. > Toxic metals sometimes imitate the action of an essential element in the body, interfering with the metabolic process resulting in illness. Many metals, particularly heavy metals are toxic Metal toxicity is the correlation between density and reactivity. Iron and manganese are limited exceptions where iron is about 84% of hemoglobin, which is about 80% of red blood cells, but its toxic (though in larger doses) matches almost exactly the implications of other metal toxicity.
NikolaeVarius 8y ago
https://n.pr/2XfmoZh https://n.pr/2XfmoZh NPR correction
supermw 8y ago
My mother still has old uranium glassware in her home. Not really sure if it's dangerous or not but it's pretty cool to see in person.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Radiologically, Uranium glass is virtually harmless. However I believe Uranium glass often contains a lot of lead as well, similar to the lead crystal glassware a lot of people own. Lead crystal glass is mostly harmless but not totally harmless, if you leave anything alcoholic or acidic in it long enough, it will leach a significant amount of lead. Used briefly on occasion it's not really a big deal.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    It’s important to down the drink fast to reduce the risk of poisoning?
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      It's not quite that serious. It's fine to serve yourself with a lead crystal but you shouldn't be storing wine in a lead crystal decanter or something like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass#Safety
saul_goodman 8y ago
Jeezus Cripes, way over reaction. I have Fiestaware plates that put out over 30uSv/h / 3mR/h / 9200cpm. Unrefined uranium ore puts out waaaay less that. As long as you're not sleeping with the junk under your bed or working with it next to your desk all day long you're fine. Even then, it's still less exposure than air crews that fly every day receive. No one was harmed by this.
- eveningcoffee 8y ago
  For the reference, I measured the levels with my basic dosimeter on one flight. Measurements topped at 72 uSv/h. Common reading during the flight was in the 50-60 uSv/h range. What I found very interesting was that the levels were slightly lower in the air near the ground than on the ground where I landed.
  - simonh 8y ago
    Maybe that just means the ground is more radioactive than air?
    - lightedman 8y ago
      This is the correct answer. There're tons of microparticles of radioactive monzonite (and other radioactive minerals) in the dirt. And if you're near a granite body, you will show even higher levels of radiation. Downvoters need to pick up a geology book.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  It’s entirely plausible that in practice nobody received a dangerous amount of radiation in this case, but... > The report indicated radiation levels at "13.9 mR/hr" where the buckets were stored, and "800 mR/hr" on contact with the ore. > [...] 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. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2876435002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...
stesch 8y ago
We were nowhere near the Grand Canyon.
dwighttk 8y ago
They've issued a correction clarifying that it is Uranium ore, not straight Uranium. This paragraph didn't make sense to me: "Photos provided to the newspaper by Stephenson show technicians arriving in June 2018 to take away the buckets of uranium ore. The technicians reportedly dumped the buckets at an old uranium mine 2 miles away, then for some reason brought the buckets back to the building." I'm guessing they mean "dumped" the contents of "the buckets"
En_gr_Student 8y ago
The f*ed up part is the impact on the fetus. The dosage level before harm or death for kids is 10x smaller than for adults. For babies in the womb it is way smaller than that. These folks may have covered up something that resulted in the miscarriage, or birth defects of the child of any pregnant woman who stood near that closet for just a few minutes. I think the folks who covered it up for 8 months, or the morons who (threw the rocks in a hole and brought the nuclear-contaminated buckets back) should lose all their power and position. That is an amazingly bad decision. Lucky thing some kid walked around with a geiger counter. He recorded the levels, so the numbers that officials are hiding, he knows them. His counter can be tested and certified by a decent national lab, and the exact and calibrated level of the radiation determined. And those contaminated buckets tell something about the material that was in them. Ore shmore. It is a radioactive substance that gives off dangerous levels of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, as well as nuclear byproducts like radon and other gaseous nuclear isotopes. Get more than the "top paragraph summary" that NPR did on the original AZ Central article by reading it in its entirety. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/20/grand-canyon-museum-uranium-radiation-safety-manager-warning-elston-swede-stephenson/2923344002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/2...
- cr0sh 8y ago
  > Lucky thing some kid walked around with a geiger counter. He recorded the levels, so the numbers that officials are hiding, he knows them. His counter can be tested Neither the linked article nor your's said anything about what kind of "geiger counter" this kid had; whether it was something picked up off ebay, an old civil defence unit, or some kit or custom made thing from Electronic Goldmine (a native AZ electronics surplus and education kit supplier - https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/ https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/)... It's very well possible that the kid has no real numbers; that is completely unknown. I'd be willing to bet you could walk into an old mining bar in Flagstaff and have more exposure to natural radiation used in the building materials than you'd experience from these buckets of old ore. Natural radiation sources like these are all over the place in Arizona. The only real danger I could see and understand, though, is whether these buckets were covered or open; could someone or a kid have "dug through them" with their hands, or been in closer proximity to the material inside - where the dust or whatnot could be left on their hands to be ingested or inhaled in some manner. That would be a much different situation than merely being near it for a small amount of time.

155 points by _bxg1 8y ago

Pretty lacking on specifics. What was the actual radiation level measured? I would assume these were not buckets of pure uranium, but of uranium ore that is naturally all over the place in the West, and not terribly radioactive in its natural state.

_bxg1 8y ago
True, it was a little vague. They mentioned the measured levels after the bucket was removed, but not before.
- snazz 8y ago
  There is one quote that leads the reader to believe that the radiation was pretty strong: > at levels he calculated to be 1,400 times the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's safe level for children. Note that it doesn’t mention the timeframe that the children would have to be exposed to the buckets to get that number. It mentions 30 minutes earlier, but it’s unclear whether 30 minutes was used to get the “1400 times” figure.
  - tomatotomato37 8y ago
    Yeah, I've always found vague calculations of radiation exposure like this to be highly inaccurate, mostly because people can't into inverse square law and fuck up the units. I'll wait until the OSHA investigation to reveal more accurate information; my opinion is that it's the lifelong employees who hung around the area who should actually be worried, instead of some kid who went on a field trip there six years ago.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
* 800 mR/hr if you physically touched the rocks * 280-320 mR/hr if you physically touched the bucket(s) * 13.9 mR/hr if you were within 5 ft * 1.85 mR/hr inside the building more than 5 feet away. Also can be thought of as "0 mR/hr above background" * 2.02 mR/hr outside, in the park, on a bright sunny day. 2.02 is "background". i.e. the levels everyone is getting from natural sources outside. 13.9 mR/hr is 139 microsievert (µSv) per hour So, really its that being near the buckets was 139 µSv/hr. A child would get ~70 µSv in that half hour, in theory. If we believe Randall Munroe's (of xkcd fame) sourcing in https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/, then that means the kid got less than a round-trip flight from NY to LA sitting there for 30 minutes. "1400 times" sounds like one heck of a scare tactic. Not saying this was smart, but its overly alarmist. Numbers are from a picture I found. Scroll down a section on "Takeaways from the report" where it summarizes the exposure. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2876435002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  You do get a lot more exposure if you’re working at the museum every day though.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Only if you spent hours within 5 feet of the bucket. (That's what the comparison with sunlight is aboot)
    - tinus_hn 8y ago
      They are cumulative, if you walk around the museum every day you could easily rack up hours with 5 feet.
  - dmckeon 8y ago
    Note that the South Rim of GCNP is at 7,000 feet (2100m) elevation. Also, next week, Feb 26, GCNP is 100 years old.
trimbo 8y ago
From a screenshot at [1] * 800 mR/hr if you touched the ore * 280 mR/hr on the surface of the bucket (sealed) * "0 above background" if you were 5 ft away from the bucket * 2.5 mR/hr if you were touching the cabinet it was in [1] - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2876435002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...
- gotocake 8y ago
  Basically unless you were having a very prolonged and loving relationship with the bucket, you were exposed to nothing of consequence. That doesn’t excuse the morons who kept this stuff, and if a kid took a souvenir home or there had been a fire it could have been a lot worse. They may have also had unacceptable levels of radon. If I worked there I’d want to know more, but just as a visitor I’d shrug and get on with life. I’m wondering why they used R instead of Sv though. It’s a single source with a single quality factor, and were only concerned with the impact on humans.
  - sandwall 8y ago
    Roentgens are historical units of exposure, it's simply what a lot of older meters read. Roentgens can be assumed to safely equal RADs (although they don't, conversion is less than 1 for kV), the historical unit for "Radiation Absorbed Dose." For photons this would be equal to REM "Radiation Equivalent Man." All old units; conversion to S.I., 100 rad = 1 Gray (J/Kg), 100 rem = 1 Sievert. Essentially, who ever wrote the report was old and conservative. The occupational risk is also essentially nil. This is much ado about nada.
    - your-nanny 8y ago
      assuming inhalation if dust was not an issue..
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        5gal buckets are designed to be handled by all manner of people who don't have enough time to give a crap and still get to their destination without leaking. A properly sealed 5gal bucket will remain air tight even if it's bouncing around inside a tote in the bed of a truck on rural gravel roads for ~10mo (the tote flooded at some point but the bucket wound up dry). Sitting in a cabinet the risk of dust making it out of the bucket would have been nonexistent so long as the lid was on it.
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
>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. >The Nuclear Regulatory Commission measures radiation contamination in millisieverts per hour or per year. According to Stephenson, close exposures to the uranium buckets could have exposed adults to 400 times the health limit — and children to 4,000 times what is considered safe. https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2905358002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2019/02/18/grand-...

ChuckMcM 8y ago

If they had just let them sit there for 4 and a half billion years they would be half gone :-). If you hike around the Grand Canyon you are going to be exposed to Uranium. There are a lot of mines in and around the place (see here: https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/grand-canyon-uranium https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/grand-canyon-uranium). It really isn't something to worry about unless you want to live their and/or eat food that has been contaminated.

hirundo 8y ago

Depending on the radiation level the public may have benefited via radiation hormesis. With only the given data it's hard to know if this was a net health menace or boon.

jhayward 8y ago
The radiation hormesis theory[1] isn't widely accepted and shouldn't be used as a policy mechanism until there is much more known about its legitimacy and limitations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
- pfdietz 8y ago
  Also, if one abandons the idea that dose response is linear, there is the possibility that the slope is even larger in the low dose regime than LNT would predict. The conservative approach would then be to adopt stricter limits, not looser ones.
  - sandwall 8y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6043938/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6043938/
    - pfdietz 8y ago
      Nothing there contradicts what I wrote. The notion seems to be the alternative to LNT is "radiation is not as bad at low doses as LNT". But there are many alternatives, all consistent with the evidence, and some would have the effect at low doses be worse. Radiation is not a criminal defendant that requires proof beyond reasonable doubt to be regulated.
      - acidburnNSA 8y ago
        Expensively regulating something well below any detectable effect could have negative consequences regardless of whether or not it is a criminal defendant. For instance, nuclear power plants are very nearly carbon free, yet they're expensive in part because of the Linear No-Threshold model of radiation dose at very low doses. If they were cheaper and we were fully decarbonized in 1995, we could avoid the other more detectable effects of global warming.

mirimir 8y ago

Years ago, I was working in a biochem lab, and helping a state senator's staff draft legislation. The state capitol building was classic granite and marble. So one day, I brought in a Geiger counter. Everyone freaked ;)

trumped 8y ago
did you test your kitchen counter?
- mirimir 8y ago
  Well, at that point, my kitchen counter was Formica over plywood, so not much of a radiation source. But I did test my wife's Mexican pottery, and some pretty enamelwork and art glass. Freaked her too ;) But yes, much granite does contain substantial K-40 (as do we) and some (probably less than 10%) is a substantial source of radon. Also thoron, but it's too short-lived to accumulate. You can buy test kits designed to measure radon production rate from surfaces. The radon gets captured on activated charcoal. You return the kit(s) to the provider, and they send you results.

ratsbane 8y ago

Which takes me back to a shower thought I had a long time ago: How do you know you don't need a geiger counter unless you have one?

TheSoftwareGuy 8y ago
Somebody else has one? Realistically though most things aren’t radioactive in a meaningful way.
- ratsbane 8y ago
  Yep! I carry a Gamma Scout in my car: https://www.gamma-scout.com/EN/GammaFAQ.php https://www.gamma-scout.com/EN/GammaFAQ.php
car 8y ago
I had the same thought, and wanted to check some strange ore from the desert. Eventually I soldered my own Geiger counter, thanks to the fabulous Safecast project. This is it: https://blog.safecast.org/bgeigie-nano/ https://blog.safecast.org/bgeigie-nano/ It cost ~$650, but that's because it uses a very high-end geiger tube, and can detect alpha and beta in addition to gamma radiation. Comparable commercial devices do apparently cost a couple thousand. Low and behold, the desert rocks weren't radioactive. However, taking the counter on an airplane was quite shocking, and gave the cabin crew real concern.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  > ...taking the counter on an airplane was quite shocking, and gave the cabin crew real concern. Concern about radiation exposure or concern about the mysterious-looking device you whipped out mid flight? ;)
- ratsbane 8y ago
  I hadn't heard of Safecast before. Very interesting! Nice data sets there, too.

gumby 8y ago

I remember visiting the Toronto science centre in the 1970s and just pickingup a block of uranium for comparison with a block of aluminium and perhaps other ones. They wanted to teach kids about density. Glad they didn't use plutonium, which is toxic!

userbinator 8y ago
Uranium is toxic too, but I bet that was depleted uranium, which isn't all that radioactive and the bigger danger is its regular toxicity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
- lostlogin 8y ago
  Can any of the down voters add a comment? Is this inaccurate?
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    I didn't downvote, but I was surprised to read in that link that "DU used in US munitions has 60% of the radioactivity of natural uranium". I knew already that the US fired a lot of it at Iraqis not long ago and it's still killing them. That wiki page links to this 2013 story: "Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. ..."My colleagues and I have all noticed an increase in Fallujah of congenital malformations, sterility, and infertility," he said. ... the Fallujah health crisis represented "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied". ... Doctors in Fallujah are continuing to witness the aforementioned steep rise in severe congenital birth defects, including children being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems. Today in Fallujah,...many families are too scared to have children..." https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/2013315171951838638.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/201331517...

sandwall 8y ago

As correctly pointed out by other readers, this is a non-issue and complete overreaction. All feeding into misconceptions and irrational fear of radiation. The "safety professional" was out of his depth and clearly undereducated about the risks of radiation and uranium ore in particular. Hence, the true risk of a "dirty bomb" -- is psychological, i.e. it would be a weapon of mass disruption (not destruction), triaging a "worried well" would be expensive and time consuming.

Terr_ 8y ago
> Hence, the true risk of a "dirty bomb" -- is psychological I imagine there are some radiation-sources which are harmless outside the body because the dead cells of your skin would easily absorb and block them, but would wreak havoc if they were ingested or inhaled as dust. Sometimes this is presented as a question where you have three or four cookies, which emit things like alpha/beta/gamma radiation and possibly neutrons, and you have to decide which cookie to eat, which to put into your pocket, which to put in a lead box, etc.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Given everything people say about the 2008 crash, destroying the housing market in a few key places seems like it would have a bigger effect than outright killing a few hundred people, unless it's a made-for-television spectacle like the WTC. Dirty bombs are totally a weapon against real estate prices lol
Spooky23 8y ago
On a purely radiation focused scale, sure. But this is a big deal, as it’s an indicator of the lack of effective management and controls surrounding it. Where did it come from? Why was it stored where it was stored? Why did employees just dump the material?
- deleted 8y ago

js2 8y ago

Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19195087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19195087 Not nearly as interesting as the radioactive boyscout story: https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scout/ https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scou... David Hahn sadly passed away at 39: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioactive-boy-scout-died-at-age-39/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioa...

rocky1138 8y ago
It would be amazing and not unlike his character to have staged his death.
djsumdog 8y ago
The boysout and the smoke detector nuclear experiment is one of those really amazing and interesting stories. Geeze, I wanted to look up him, thinking he'd have gotten an engineering scholarship or something. Looks like he served in the military, but afterwards he got addicted to drugs and died in his late 30s. ... .. Geeze that's fucking tragic.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

austincheney 8y ago

Uranium ore is mostly alpha particle radiation. Clothing and aluminum foil are generally sufficient to block alpha particle radiation. Uranium metal can be up 28% beta particle, which can be blocked by sandbags or a thick brick wall. Depleted uranium contains almost no beta particle radiation. Uranium ore lacks the purity of uranium metal and usually more beta particles than depleted unranium but not much more though it’s purity and composition are naturally variant. Because of that uranium is radioactive and that radioactivity is harmful, but is not the primary harm, unless you are allergic to uranium at which point the radiation is the primary harm. Also, sensitivity to radiation varies wildly by person. Uranium is a high density metal that has some dissolution capability into water, like lead, which means heavy metal poisoning. Uranium is more dense than lead and thus more poisonous but less poisonous than osmium. Under certain conditions uranium can be (or become) very brittle and break apart into a fine dust that can be respirated.

monochromatic 8y ago
> Uranium is more dense than lead and thus more poisonous I think there’s a little more to heavy metal toxicity than that...
- austincheney 8y ago
  How so?
  - tco03 8y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_toxicity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_toxicity It appears as there if is little correlation between metal density and toxicity
    - austincheney 8y ago
      Weird, your source says the opposite. > Toxic metals sometimes imitate the action of an essential element in the body, interfering with the metabolic process resulting in illness. Many metals, particularly heavy metals are toxic Metal toxicity is the correlation between density and reactivity. Iron and manganese are limited exceptions where iron is about 84% of hemoglobin, which is about 80% of red blood cells, but its toxic (though in larger doses) matches almost exactly the implications of other metal toxicity.

NikolaeVarius 8y ago

https://n.pr/2XfmoZh https://n.pr/2XfmoZh NPR correction

supermw 8y ago

My mother still has old uranium glassware in her home. Not really sure if it's dangerous or not but it's pretty cool to see in person.

darkpuma 8y ago
Radiologically, Uranium glass is virtually harmless. However I believe Uranium glass often contains a lot of lead as well, similar to the lead crystal glassware a lot of people own. Lead crystal glass is mostly harmless but not totally harmless, if you leave anything alcoholic or acidic in it long enough, it will leach a significant amount of lead. Used briefly on occasion it's not really a big deal.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  It’s important to down the drink fast to reduce the risk of poisoning?
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    It's not quite that serious. It's fine to serve yourself with a lead crystal but you shouldn't be storing wine in a lead crystal decanter or something like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass#Safety

saul_goodman 8y ago

Jeezus Cripes, way over reaction. I have Fiestaware plates that put out over 30uSv/h / 3mR/h / 9200cpm. Unrefined uranium ore puts out waaaay less that. As long as you're not sleeping with the junk under your bed or working with it next to your desk all day long you're fine. Even then, it's still less exposure than air crews that fly every day receive. No one was harmed by this.

eveningcoffee 8y ago
For the reference, I measured the levels with my basic dosimeter on one flight. Measurements topped at 72 uSv/h. Common reading during the flight was in the 50-60 uSv/h range. What I found very interesting was that the levels were slightly lower in the air near the ground than on the ground where I landed.
- simonh 8y ago
  Maybe that just means the ground is more radioactive than air?
  - lightedman 8y ago
    This is the correct answer. There're tons of microparticles of radioactive monzonite (and other radioactive minerals) in the dirt. And if you're near a granite body, you will show even higher levels of radiation. Downvoters need to pick up a geology book.
jacobolus 8y ago
It’s entirely plausible that in practice nobody received a dangerous amount of radiation in this case, but... > The report indicated radiation levels at "13.9 mR/hr" where the buckets were stored, and "800 mR/hr" on contact with the ore. > [...] 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. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2876435002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...

stesch 8y ago

We were nowhere near the Grand Canyon.

dwighttk 8y ago

They've issued a correction clarifying that it is Uranium ore, not straight Uranium. This paragraph didn't make sense to me: "Photos provided to the newspaper by Stephenson show technicians arriving in June 2018 to take away the buckets of uranium ore. The technicians reportedly dumped the buckets at an old uranium mine 2 miles away, then for some reason brought the buckets back to the building." I'm guessing they mean "dumped" the contents of "the buckets"

En_gr_Student 8y ago

The f*ed up part is the impact on the fetus. The dosage level before harm or death for kids is 10x smaller than for adults. For babies in the womb it is way smaller than that. These folks may have covered up something that resulted in the miscarriage, or birth defects of the child of any pregnant woman who stood near that closet for just a few minutes. I think the folks who covered it up for 8 months, or the morons who (threw the rocks in a hole and brought the nuclear-contaminated buckets back) should lose all their power and position. That is an amazingly bad decision. Lucky thing some kid walked around with a geiger counter. He recorded the levels, so the numbers that officials are hiding, he knows them. His counter can be tested and certified by a decent national lab, and the exact and calibrated level of the radiation determined. And those contaminated buckets tell something about the material that was in them. Ore shmore. It is a radioactive substance that gives off dangerous levels of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, as well as nuclear byproducts like radon and other gaseous nuclear isotopes. Get more than the "top paragraph summary" that NPR did on the original AZ Central article by reading it in its entirety. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/20/grand-canyon-museum-uranium-radiation-safety-manager-warning-elston-swede-stephenson/2923344002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/2...

cr0sh 8y ago
> Lucky thing some kid walked around with a geiger counter. He recorded the levels, so the numbers that officials are hiding, he knows them. His counter can be tested Neither the linked article nor your's said anything about what kind of "geiger counter" this kid had; whether it was something picked up off ebay, an old civil defence unit, or some kit or custom made thing from Electronic Goldmine (a native AZ electronics surplus and education kit supplier - https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/ https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/)... It's very well possible that the kid has no real numbers; that is completely unknown. I'd be willing to bet you could walk into an old mining bar in Flagstaff and have more exposure to natural radiation used in the building materials than you'd experience from these buckets of old ore. Natural radiation sources like these are all over the place in Arizona. The only real danger I could see and understand, though, is whether these buckets were covered or open; could someone or a kid have "dug through them" with their hands, or been in closer proximity to the material inside - where the dust or whatnot could be left on their hands to be ingested or inhaled in some manner. That would be a much different situation than merely being near it for a small amount of time.