11 ms·

Now, this is probably nothing. The sensors are doing their thing and from time to time there is a spike. On the other hand, this is how Chernobyl first was repo

• jl6 6y ago
  It's probably not a problem... probably... just a showing a small discrepancy. It's well within acceptable bounds. Seriously, I’d be interested in some stats on how various nuclear accidents have been disclosed/reported. Feels like a good litmus test of transparency.
  • ixfo 6y ago
    Set anti-mass spectrometers to 105%.
• highhedgehog 6y ago
  I read about that story. it's incredible. love it (in a weird way I guess, but it was so fascinating)
• Arech 6y ago
  Wow.. Never heard of it before, thanks. That heavily reminds me the "Roadside Picnic" (1972) novel of Strugatsky brothers (that same novel, that coined term "Stalker"). The only difference that the heroes of the novel dealt with consequences of alien civilization visit, and ”Goiânia accident” is purely our's own...
  • fnord123 6y ago
    Roadside picnic didn't coin the term stalker. Stalker is a Soviet film based on the book.
    • krick 6y ago
      Yes it did. "Stalker" is the name of their profession in the book.
      • fnord123 6y ago
        The word "stalker" comes from the 1500s. Deer stalking is a profession that existed in the 1800s. Roadside Picnic came out in 1971. Maybe you mean Roadside Picnic introduced the English word "stalker" to the Russian language? It certainly didn't coin the term (create a new word).
        • zxcmx 6y ago
          It coined the use of "stalker" to refer to a specific sort of post-apocalyptic profession, someone who is adept at navigating the waste left by some disaster or "forbidden" places. Dangers might be physical, radiological, or metaphysical. In modern usage it has made its way into books and video games, and people who do tours of Chernobyl have been known to refer to themseves as such.
        • krick 6y ago
          "Roadside Picnic" is a Russian book. The word "stalker" wasn't used in Russian language at all before it. Hence, it coined the term. The rest is demagogy.
          • fnord123 6y ago
            That's not what coining a word means.
    • ehnto 6y ago
      I'm not a huge film buff or anything, but I did watch Stalker. The music and cinematography was captivating in a way I rarely get in anything but video games or books. Usually movies don't capture me that way, they're far too fast, literal and descriptive. Stalker left so much to the imagination that I was constantly engaged in trying to figure out what they were thinking, where they were going, and what it was they expected to find. It gave me all the time I needed to think about it too.
  • sampo 6y ago
    > "Roadside Picnic" (1972) novel of Strugatsky brothers Before his death, Boris Strugatsky gave a license for writing a sequel to Finnish author Ville Vuorela. Vuorela published The Hollow Pilgrim in 2014 as ebook. Something went wrong with the deal between the small Finnish publisher and Amazon, and now the ebook is annoyingly difficult to find. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23354402-the-hollow-pilgrim https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23354402-the-hollow-pilg...
    • gorgoiler 6y ago
      The filming of Stalker[1] was itself fraught with industrial contamination — possibly with to the extent of eventually claiming Tarkovsky’s own life, by cancer. Zona by Geoff Dyer is an excellent discourse on the work, which I heartily recommend, and where I first read about this and many other fascinating details. [1] ...or ker-tan-kep as my own ignorant tongue insists on pronouncing it.
• mcguire 6y ago
  Or the Church Rock incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill...
  • hirsin 6y ago
    Thank you for this. It's my first time learning about it. I'm almost happy it's unknown since this is such a better argument against nuclear power than 3 Mile etc. Although I suppose for it to be an effective scare tactic you'd have to ask yourself some tricky questions about how much you value indigenous lives over corporations...
    • grogenaut 6y ago
      Take a look at the hanford site if you want to be scared. And look at where it is, note that's the Columbia river, which rolls right through northern portland. Or if you don't care about people, it also powers most of the data centers in the northwest. And is right near where most of the hops are grown (won't someone think of the beer!). https://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/AboutHanfordCleanup https://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/AboutHanfordCleanup https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hanford+Site/@46.5656811,-119.5142379,40189m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x54985a3722b17805:0x350eb8746e4035a7!8m2!3d46.5506839!4d-119.4889741 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hanford+Site/@46.5656811,-... https://www.google.com/maps/place/Portland+International+Airport/@45.6001755,-122.6302165,26336m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x54985a3722b17805:0x350eb8746e4035a7!2sHanford+Site!8m2!3d46.5506839!4d-119.4889741!3m4!1s0x5495a0aa74dc20d1:0x5bda7693380e5c3d!8m2!3d45.589777!4d-122.5950623 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Portland+International+Air...
      • mcchew 6y ago
        That area also has lots of Bitcoin mining operations. All of society is at risk over here.
        • grogenaut 6y ago
          Definitly, the world would be much worse off without the blockchain!
• shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  Well There's Your Problem did an episode on that: https://youtu.be/34rdxDgpaaA https://youtu.be/34rdxDgpaaA
  • andbberger 6y ago
    Should probably add a disclaimer for people who expect a dry engineering history podcast! wtypp is truly excellent, but go in expecting irreverence
• kens 6y ago
  My favorite radioactive contamination story is the truck in Juarez that was unknowingly contaminated with Cobalt-60 pellets. The truck died (for unrelated reason) and was scrapped and melted down in an iron foundry. The contamination was only discovered by accident when a truckload of rebar made a wrong turn in Los Alamos National Laboratories and set off a radiation alarm. They managed to track down the truck, find the source of the radiation, and get rid of the contaminated metal. Fortunately, nobody died. https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/accidents/juarez.htm https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/accidents/juarez.htm
  • qbaqbaqba 6y ago
    I live near an aluminum foundry and everything going in goes through a radiation detector.
    • m4rtink 6y ago
      Same with waste incineration plants, for the same resons - apparently it is sensitive enough to detect even diapers with radio contrast therapy residue inside a full garbage truck.
      • sandworm101 6y ago
        Some airports got these post-911. They were called "granny detectors" because rather than finding dirty bombs they always found the old person who just underwent a scan using radioactive tracer. They reality is that many medical procedures irradiate patients. Many dead bodies, if they were not human, would be radioactive enough to be considered hazardous.
        • scruple 6y ago
          > Many dead bodies, if they were not human, would be radioactive enough to be considered hazardous. I'm curious, can they be (safely) cremated?
          • 6y ago
• georgecmu 6y ago
  Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide... In 1989, a small capsule containing highly radioactive caesium-137 was found inside the concrete wall of an apartment building, with a surface gamma radiation exposure dose rate of 1800 R/year. The source, originally a part of a radiation level gauge, was lost in the Karansky quarry. The gravel from the quarry was used in construction. The cesium capsule ended up in the concrete panel of Apartment 85 of Building 7 on Gvardeytsev Kantemirovtsev Street, between apartments 85 and 52. Over 9 years, two families lived in Apartment 85. A child's bed was located directly next to the wall containing the capsule. By the time the capsule was discovered, 4 residents of the building had died from leukemia and 17 more had received varying doses of radiation. The accident was detected only after the residents requested that the level of radiation be measured in the apartment by a health physicist. Part of the wall was removed and sent to the Institute for Nuclear Research (NASU), where the cesium capsule was removed and disposed of. The total number of deaths is alternately reported as 2, 4 (3 children and one adult), or 6 (4 children and 2 adults).
  • fsflover 6y ago
    Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
    • WhiteSage 6y ago
      Or this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acerinox_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acerinox_accident In May 1998, a caesium-137 source managed to pass through the monitoring equipment in an Acerinox scrap metal reprocessing plant in Los Barrios, Spain. When melted, the caesium-137 caused the release of a radioactive cloud. The Acerinox chimney detectors failed to detect it, but it was eventually detected in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The radioactive levels measured were up to 1000 times higher than normal.
      • trenchgun 6y ago
        How harmful is 1000 times higher than normal?
• pizza234 6y ago
  I find something in this story puzzling - why were the IGR owners charged? Based on the story as published on Wikipedia, they tried to recover the unit, but they were officially barred to do so.
  • worewood 6y ago
    When faced with tragedy some people need to know "who was guilty", so this leads to lots of lawsuits like this. Lack of education led to the trespassing of property, zero knowledge of radiation to believing it was supernatural, the justice system preventing the cleanup, etc. Means there is no single point of guilt and its hard for people to grasp this.
  • pierrec 6y ago
    That part of the article is poorly phrased and leaves out some important information on the judgement. There's a link to an issue of Nuclear Law Bulletin that provides better detail. The biggest charges were ordered to be paid by CNEN (since preventing this kind of accident is part of their job, and they were notified of the potential danger well in advance) and IPASGO (the new owners of the site, who were also aware of the danger and didn't really do anything about it). Finally as you say, two people from IGR (the clinic that moved out) were also charged, because they removed "gates, windows, timberwork and the roof" from the facility while leaving the radioactive device for later - which might also explain why the new owners eventually got pissed and decided to lock them out. In short the whole thing was a collective train wreck, but the most obvious failure seems to be that CNEN should have taken action immediately after being notified of the danger. Hopefully they're a bit more reactive now. https://web.archive.org/web/20120318233148/http://www.oecd-nea.org/law/nlb/Nlb-66/023-032.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20120318233148/http://www.oecd-n...
• ojbyrne 6y ago
  Another: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
• biggestdecision 6y ago
  For anyone else interested in the topic of radiological accidents, check out the reports published by the IAEA. https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/pub815_web.pdf https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/pub815_web.pd... Curiously like in the series Chernobyl, the first person to take radiation measurements at the scene in Goiania thought his equipment was faulty, because it measured at the maximum of the scale.
• saulrh 6y ago
  > For more radiation horror I'll skip, thanks. I already get enough horror stories and don't need wacky outliers leaning on my brain's various failure modes. Like, it took me less than ten seconds to find a news article from last month in a specific city titled "family of 5 killed in car crash". I can't spend my anxiety on things that are so much less dangerous than anything else I do in a given day.
• xg15 6y ago
  > *Now, this is probably nothing. The sensors are doing their thing and from time to time there is a spike. I can't imagine that the engineers at that monitoring station wouldn't check for measuring errors before releasing such a statement.
• jnxx 6y ago
  These sensors can be incredibly sensitive and can capture contamination from small technical or medical radiation sources over a long distance. What is much more of a mystery is how little we understand about the effects of low-dose radiation. In Germany, there was a study started after since 1990 a cluster of leukemia cases appeared around a specific power plant near Hamburg. So, a large statistical study was done about the incidence of leukemia in all of Germany, and whether there is a correlation with distance to power plants. There was a correlation found (http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0221-20100317939 http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0221-20100317939), the incidence of Lekuemia appears about 50% higher - but we don't know why. The classical radiation-dosis effect models do not explain what is observed. As there were no significant contamination accidents in Germany, there is some suspicion about the effects of low-dose radiation. Of course, the largest case of low-dose contamination in Western Europe and Germany was the Chernobyl accident from 1986. There have been some statistical large-scales studies which observed (small) changes in sex ratios (that is, the quotient of male and female offspring) https://archive.org/details/pubmed-PMC3765590/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/pubmed-PMC3765590/mode/2up . But still, these are only correlations. One train of thought has been that low-level radiation could effect the expression of genetic information. The field of study which looks at this is called epigenetics. It turns out that the working of the genetic "code" is surprisingly complex. It is not like a app package that gets installed on your PC, but it is rather a very complex self-modifying program which reacts to different environmental factors during installation. Now, there is some research of which factors could affect gene expression and how radation could play a role: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=epigenetic+ionising+radiation&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=epig... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378378215002169 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03783... This is by far not mainstream research, but the fact that we have no explanation for the correlation between incidence of leukemia and distance to nuclear plants points at that the classical models are missing something significant and we do not know yet the whole picture.
• soapdog 6y ago
  I remember seeing the Goiania accident on the news. I was seven years old. It was not scary for me back then as it is right now.
  • thiagocsf 6y ago
    I could have been a poster child for the "Eu amo Goiânia" campaign (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp8bq6kgCu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp8bq6kgCu8). I lived in Rio but had family in Goiânia and was visiting them when the accident happened. School was tough for a couple of weeks...
• jnxx 6y ago
  So, it seems to come from nuclear fission, likely of civilian origin, and perhaps originating from fuel elements: > The Netherland's public health agency said Friday it analysis of Nordic data showed that radionuclides had come "from the direction of Western Russia," indicating "damage to a fuel element in a nuclear power plant." > On Friday, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) tweeted that its sensors had detected "harmless" isotopes, identified as Caesium 137, Caesium 134, and Ruthenium 103, "very much probably of civilian origin." > > According to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency based in Vienna, Western Europe has 108 reactors and Central and Eastern Europe 73 reactors. https://www.dw.com/en/slight-radioactivity-rise-in-nordic-countries/a-53968555 https://www.dw.com/en/slight-radioactivity-rise-in-nordic-co... The presence uf Ruthenium-103 indicates that these are fresh fission products because it has a half-life of only 39 days (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_ruthenium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_ruthenium). So, it is not impossible that it is a leak in a civil reactor.
• o-__-o 6y ago
  The Goiania accident sounds like the source of the plot for Pu-239