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Tragically relevant story to accompany this article: the Goiânia accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go

by Bakary 4y ago

Tragically relevant story to accompany this article: the Goiânia accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

dqpb 4y ago
> stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city Is it “stealing” if it’s abandoned?
- gambiting 4y ago
  Yes.
- lIl-IIIl 4y ago
  There was a security guard guarding the site, and the site was broken into on the day the guard didn't show up for work.
  - dqpb 4y ago
    Ok, that does sound like stealing
- baud147258 4y ago
  Abandoned means at the time not in use, not that it's not owned by anyone.
- zxexz 4y ago
  I would probably have used the word “scrapped”. This whole thing was a complete failure of bureaucracy from that start and the only entities that deserve any blame are those responsible for leaving nuclear waste in an abandoned facility after being told about it.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  I think putting it this way absolves the Brazilian government too much. What happened is 100% their fault. The hospital moved to a new site but as there was disagreement with their previous landlord they were prevented to move equipments by the police despite trying to secure the source which was later stolen and having repeatedly warned of its danger.
ssizn 4y ago
- jcoder 4y ago
  Is something less tragic if the victims weren’t fully participating in capitalism at the time of injury? If they’re performing a societal function that you obviously think is beneath you?
- kergonath 4y ago
  Yeah, tragic. They are no less human than you are. They had no clue what they were doing, like all of us in general. What fraction of the population is aware of the effect of radiation and the toxicity of medical sources? How would they go about assessing the risk in this situation? Uncontrolled contamination can also harm innocent bystanders, in this case children.
  - ssizn 4y ago
    I know not to barge into buildings to steal stuff that doesn’t belong to me and that I know nothing about.
    - NoSorryCannot 4y ago
      That's right, and it's illegal for rich and poor alike. That's how you know it's fair.
- justusthane 4y ago
  That is an extremely cavalier take, especially considering: > His six-year-old daughter, Leide das Neves Ferreira, later ate an egg while sitting on this floor. She was also fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, applying it to her body and showing it off to her mother. Dust from the powder fell on the egg she was consuming; she eventually absorbed 1.0 GBq and received a total dose of 6.0 Gy, more than a fatal dose even with treatment. Maybe read the article before commenting?
  - 4y ago
xtracto 4y ago
Ooh, the Cobalt-60 incident in Mexico is also pretty crazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez_cobalt-60_contamination_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez_cobalt-60_c... There were houses built of contaminated rebar! The story gets crazier the more you read about it.
- corpMaverick 4y ago
  My father built our house in Chihuahua city around 1985. We lived in that house for 25 years. I never thought about it until we had a case of brain cancer in the family 3 years ago.
- orbital-decay 4y ago
  There were several incidents like this, ex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide... A caesium-137 source from an industrial sensor has been lost and ended up inside a concrete wall of an apartment building; four people died from it.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    There were also several incidents from the russian army just up and leaving orphan sources in the wild when the URSS failed e.g. Lilo and Lia (both in Georgia). Lia was two RTGs, which the URSS used quite a lot, and which regularly got lost or into accidents e.g. two degraded RTGs were found in the north of russia in 2003, one on the Cape of Navarin and one near Kola Bay, and two got dropped by a helo transporting them in 2004. Though from the Plainly Difficult channel, I feel like the most frequent radiological accidents aren't even orphan sources but either misused / defective radiological devices (à la Therac 25), or commercial irradiation facilities whose opsec degrades until fatal exposure occurs after a jam.
- joezydeco 4y ago
  It was a thing in the US too. My favorite coffee shop in the suburbs of Chicago got a shipment of tables that had contaminated metal from this incident. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/04/02/Radioactive-tables-recovered-in-40-states/6600449730000/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/04/02/Radioactive-tables-r...
saalweachter 4y ago
It's the scary goldilocks of nuclear waste. On the one extreme, you have the Elephant Foot at Chernobyl, which even today will kill you if you, like, go up and lick it. But it's not going to sneak up behind you, so just don't go over there. On the other extreme you have the release of radioactive water from Fukushima, which instantly dilutes to nothing in the vastness of the ocean. Meh. In the middle, you have radiation sources like this, which are small enough to be unnoticed and highly mobile, but clumpy enough to still kill you dead if you get too close. Unless you have a radiation detector, you could step on one on your way home today and never know it. Scary!
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > and never know it. Nah... You will know it quite soon.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  There’s another scary Goldilocks aspect too, which is what I thought your comment was going to be about when I started reading it. Stuff with a really short half life is horribly radioactive, but not for long. Stuff with a half life of millions of years sticks around forever, but it’s not throwing off that much radiation. But stuff in the middle (a half life of perhaps decades to a thousand years) can be very dangerous and remain that way for a long time.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  I wish phones had radiation detectors(Aside from camera based ones that aren't accurate and use battery). If 100M people had radiation detection, I'm sure we'd get a few hits every once in a while. Plus it can probably be done in roughly a headphone jack sized spot.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    I just remembered it exists in 2012. https://www.softbank.jp/support/faq/view/11235 https://www.softbank.jp/support/faq/view/11235 http://k-tai.sharp.co.jp/support/s/205sh/r_attention.html http://k-tai.sharp.co.jp/support/s/205sh/r_attention.html

by Bakary 4y ago

Tragically relevant story to accompany this article: the Goiânia accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

dqpb 4y ago

> stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city Is it “stealing” if it’s abandoned?

gambiting 4y ago
Yes.
lIl-IIIl 4y ago
There was a security guard guarding the site, and the site was broken into on the day the guard didn't show up for work.
- dqpb 4y ago
  Ok, that does sound like stealing
baud147258 4y ago
Abandoned means at the time not in use, not that it's not owned by anyone.
zxexz 4y ago
I would probably have used the word “scrapped”. This whole thing was a complete failure of bureaucracy from that start and the only entities that deserve any blame are those responsible for leaving nuclear waste in an abandoned facility after being told about it.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
I think putting it this way absolves the Brazilian government too much. What happened is 100% their fault. The hospital moved to a new site but as there was disagreement with their previous landlord they were prevented to move equipments by the police despite trying to secure the source which was later stolen and having repeatedly warned of its danger.

ssizn 4y ago

jcoder 4y ago
Is something less tragic if the victims weren’t fully participating in capitalism at the time of injury? If they’re performing a societal function that you obviously think is beneath you?
kergonath 4y ago
Yeah, tragic. They are no less human than you are. They had no clue what they were doing, like all of us in general. What fraction of the population is aware of the effect of radiation and the toxicity of medical sources? How would they go about assessing the risk in this situation? Uncontrolled contamination can also harm innocent bystanders, in this case children.
- ssizn 4y ago
  I know not to barge into buildings to steal stuff that doesn’t belong to me and that I know nothing about.
  - NoSorryCannot 4y ago
    That's right, and it's illegal for rich and poor alike. That's how you know it's fair.
justusthane 4y ago
That is an extremely cavalier take, especially considering: > His six-year-old daughter, Leide das Neves Ferreira, later ate an egg while sitting on this floor. She was also fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, applying it to her body and showing it off to her mother. Dust from the powder fell on the egg she was consuming; she eventually absorbed 1.0 GBq and received a total dose of 6.0 Gy, more than a fatal dose even with treatment. Maybe read the article before commenting?
- 4y ago

xtracto 4y ago

Ooh, the Cobalt-60 incident in Mexico is also pretty crazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez_cobalt-60_contamination_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez_cobalt-60_c... There were houses built of contaminated rebar! The story gets crazier the more you read about it.

corpMaverick 4y ago
My father built our house in Chihuahua city around 1985. We lived in that house for 25 years. I never thought about it until we had a case of brain cancer in the family 3 years ago.
orbital-decay 4y ago
There were several incidents like this, ex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide... A caesium-137 source from an industrial sensor has been lost and ended up inside a concrete wall of an apartment building; four people died from it.
- masklinn 4y ago
  There were also several incidents from the russian army just up and leaving orphan sources in the wild when the URSS failed e.g. Lilo and Lia (both in Georgia). Lia was two RTGs, which the URSS used quite a lot, and which regularly got lost or into accidents e.g. two degraded RTGs were found in the north of russia in 2003, one on the Cape of Navarin and one near Kola Bay, and two got dropped by a helo transporting them in 2004. Though from the Plainly Difficult channel, I feel like the most frequent radiological accidents aren't even orphan sources but either misused / defective radiological devices (à la Therac 25), or commercial irradiation facilities whose opsec degrades until fatal exposure occurs after a jam.
joezydeco 4y ago
It was a thing in the US too. My favorite coffee shop in the suburbs of Chicago got a shipment of tables that had contaminated metal from this incident. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/04/02/Radioactive-tables-recovered-in-40-states/6600449730000/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/04/02/Radioactive-tables-r...

saalweachter 4y ago

It's the scary goldilocks of nuclear waste. On the one extreme, you have the Elephant Foot at Chernobyl, which even today will kill you if you, like, go up and lick it. But it's not going to sneak up behind you, so just don't go over there. On the other extreme you have the release of radioactive water from Fukushima, which instantly dilutes to nothing in the vastness of the ocean. Meh. In the middle, you have radiation sources like this, which are small enough to be unnoticed and highly mobile, but clumpy enough to still kill you dead if you get too close. Unless you have a radiation detector, you could step on one on your way home today and never know it. Scary!

marcosdumay 4y ago
> and never know it. Nah... You will know it quite soon.
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
There’s another scary Goldilocks aspect too, which is what I thought your comment was going to be about when I started reading it. Stuff with a really short half life is horribly radioactive, but not for long. Stuff with a half life of millions of years sticks around forever, but it’s not throwing off that much radiation. But stuff in the middle (a half life of perhaps decades to a thousand years) can be very dangerous and remain that way for a long time.
eternityforest 4y ago
I wish phones had radiation detectors(Aside from camera based ones that aren't accurate and use battery). If 100M people had radiation detection, I'm sure we'd get a few hits every once in a while. Plus it can probably be done in roughly a headphone jack sized spot.
- fomine3 4y ago
  I just remembered it exists in 2012. https://www.softbank.jp/support/faq/view/11235 https://www.softbank.jp/support/faq/view/11235 http://k-tai.sharp.co.jp/support/s/205sh/r_attention.html http://k-tai.sharp.co.jp/support/s/205sh/r_attention.html