18 ms·

Goiânia Accident

298 points by joering2 4y ago

karlzt 4y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586
fsckboy 4y ago
>In the consequent cleanup operation...All the objects from within those houses, including personal possessions, were seized and incinerated. whose idea was this? incinerating things contaminated with radioactive material seems like the a really unsafe thing to do!
rpigab 4y ago
I know there are probably tons of horrible accidents related to radioactive material, but I wonder if this one inspired Matt Groening when he created The Simpsons between 1987 and 1989, with the famous opening sequence where Homer gets an uranium rod fall into the back of his protection suit and unknowningly brings it home. I'm no Simpsons expert so I don't know if the incident was part of a longer episode because you can't see the consequences of such an accident in the short opening sequence, but I think it's enough to get people to ask questions about this glowing green thing, if you don't already know about radioactivity. Maybe because the Simpsons became worldwide famous and one of the most popular shows ever, many people all around the world especially children are more aware of radioactive hazards, even when school systens fail to teach them about their danger.
deleted 4y ago
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warent 4y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 4y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: The Goiânia Accident (1987) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 - Nov 2021 (121 comments) Goiânia Accident - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664402 - June 2020 (2 comments)
oskob 4y ago
An excellent video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3NJXGSIIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3NJXGSIIA
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Well There's Your Problem has an episode on the incident as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34rdxDgpaaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34rdxDgpaaA
realworldperson 4y ago
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dom96 4y ago
> He soon developed a burn on his hand in the same size and shape as the aperture – he eventually underwent partial amputation of several fingers. > On September 15, Pereira visited a local clinic, where his symptoms were diagnosed as the result of something he had eaten; he was told to return home and rest. Hopefully the partial amputation occurred after the visit, otherwise I would really love to know what the clinic thought he ate that could cause partial amputation!
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  "You ate something so we need to cut off your fingers" is a sentence I hope is never spoken aloud to anyone ever.
  - r2_pilot 4y ago
    I'm posting a yahoo page about it because of a text preference for HN, but the Chubbyemu YouTube video is mildly terrifying. It's my understanding that this sort of thing is vanishingly rare, but serves as a reminder that it's better to have modern medicine than not. https://news.yahoo.com/teenager-legs-fingers-amputated-eating-033108656.html https://news.yahoo.com/teenager-legs-fingers-amputated-eatin...
    - dom96 4y ago
      wow, so it totally is possible to lose your fingers after eating something. This also show the importance of vaccination and makes me wonder: how do I know if I missed some vaccines as a kid? how do I know whether I need a booster of something since school?
      - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
        Get your medical records and visit a doctor?
    - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
      https://archive.is/KKrYN https://archive.is/KKrYN >> both of his legs and and all ten fingers amputated > better to have modern medicine than not Fuck no! Never let modern medicine butcher me like that.
dylan604 4y ago
In light of the little bitty thing lost/found in Australia, this is a good example of why they spent such an effort to find it. Forget making dirty bombs, just have a "committed to the cause" person just carry something like this around as they tour the city. At least a dirty bomb would be obvious something happened, and people could know how/why they were getting sick in the aftermath. This kind of thing would be the worst example of Silent But Deadly. Once the committed to the cause person was too affected from doing the work themselves, just have the next member pick up and carry on the mission. Ammo that never needs reloading. You just have to reload the delivery mechanisms.
- gus_massa 4y ago
  I asked in a previous thread about the relative strength of the device in Goiânia and the recent device in Australia. cosama replied: > The wikipedia article you linked mentioned that the Goiânia source was 50.9 TBq (1,380 Ci) when lost, the source in question here [in Australia] is probably 1-10 mCi, so about a million times weaker. See this other thread about the incidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34549126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34549126 .
  - mrexroad 4y ago
    Thanks, appreciate you posting it here. Was skimming for that comparison but didn’t see it.
  - rimunroe 4y ago
    The source in Australia was about 19 GBq (514 mCi) according to https://www.aap.com.au/news/search-for-radioactive-capsule-in-outback/ https://www.aap.com.au/news/search-for-radioactive-capsule-i...
    - gus_massa 4y ago
      50.9 TBq / 19 GBq = 50,000 GBq / 20 GBq = 2,500. Can I round it to 1000? Thanks for the data. So it's 1000 weaker, not 1000000 weaker.
major505 4y ago
I remember this when I was a kid. Most amazing was that the federal goverment didn't had a protocol to deal with things like that, even at the time we where building our second nuclear power plant. But the military was aable to perform a fast response for the incident. And shows that even if nuclear energy is the future, we could never understimate it.
- garyfirestorm 4y ago
  can you clarify 'even at the time we where building our second nuclear power plant'
  - igortg 4y ago
    Brazil has only 3 nuclear power plants. The accident occurred when the second one was being built.
    - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
      Brazil has only 2 nuclear power plants. The third planned one has large funding issues and construction is on-hold.
      - major505 4y ago
        Yes. Angra 1 and Angra 2. The only company that had the know how in constructions like that was involved in the Petrolão, the scandal involving bribes and and money laundry in contructions for the country national oil company, and the company was basically nuked. Now chinese contruction companies are taking the place in the market.
jeoqn 4y ago
[flagged]
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  So... You just lost your empathy for ~200 people?
- voakbasda 4y ago
  It was not forgotten. It was neglected by the government, which then then tried to blame the owners that had been begging for months for someone to address the issue. The government actively prohibited them from removing it.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    The owners also neglected to properly secure the device. In their place I'd have at the very least seal the room with a brick wall.
    - peteradio 4y ago
      How are you going to get permission to erect a brick wall when you are barred from entering the grounds to retrieve the device?
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        Securing the radioactive source is always priority number one.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  The person who forgot to remove it from the device was not among the people who died.
  - jeoqn 4y ago
    [flagged]
msie 4y ago
I saw a video depiction of the incident that wasn't listed in the wikipedia. Does anyone recall?
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iamgopal 4y ago
Pardon my ignorance but How could any radioactive material whose half life is 30 year could survive billions of years on earth and still be radioactive?
- jerf 4y ago
  You are correct. It can't. It is made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137#Uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137#Uses "As an almost purely human-made isotope, caesium-137 has been used to date wine and detect counterfeits and as a relative-dating material for assessing the age of sedimentation occurring after 1945."
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    This reminds me of a cottage industry that developed to recover iron/steel from shipwrecks that sunk before atmospheric nuclear tests began. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
- jl6 4y ago
  It hadn’t survived for billions of years, it was made of caesium-137 which was manufactured in a nuclear reactor.
- vandahm 4y ago
  Cesium-137 is made in nuclear reactors, but some radioactive isotopes with shorter half lives (well, short compared to the age of the Earth) exist in nature because they are a product of the natural radioactive decay of other, long-lived materials like Uranium.
- Sharlin 4y ago
  It took us a few hundred years, but we did finally realize the alchemists' dream of transmuting elements into other elements. It's just a little expensive.
haunter 4y ago
Here is the IAEA report from 1988 https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub815_web.pdf https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub815_web.pd... (mind you with some injury photos too)
koch 4y ago
I found this one[0] the other day where a radiation source ended up in the concrete wall of an apartment building. A whole family got leukemia, took 9 years to eventually have it removed. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > I found this one[0] the other day where a radiation source ended up in the concrete wall of an apartment building. A whole family got leukemia, took 9 years to eventually have it removed. I actually considered whether I should post this or not, but there's a game that deals with this subject matter, called Bright Lights of Svetlov: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1630920/Bright_Lights_of_Svetlov/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1630920/Bright_Lights_of_... It's setup as one of those "walking simulators" where you experience fragments of life in the Soviet Union from the perspectives of multiple people, but with a plot twist and tragedy looming around the corner. If nothing else, going into it the first time without knowing the story behind it was a curious experience. For those less interested in actually playing the thing, there's an article called "This new Russian adventure game nails 1980s USSR" that goes into more detail: https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/334455-bright-lights-svetlov-1980s-ussr https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/334455-bright-lights-svetlov-...
- cxf12 4y ago
  The awful irony is that these teletherapy devices are used to treat cancer when used improperly will cause it.
  - cobaltoxide 4y ago
    Reminds me of "the dose makes the poison"
  - hwillis 4y ago
    Chemotherapy too, since it usually causes DNA damage (cancers replicate quickly, so DNA damage affects them more). Very aggressive treatment has double-digit odds of giving you a new, additional cancer.
jasmer 4y ago
This is the issue with nuclear in general. In short, we are not responsible enough. If we were fully responsible as people, we could do it. Once rich countries did it, poor countries would demand it, and they are especially unprepared. A bit of economic and political risk and voila, regions devastated. There should be a simple rule: if you can't manage sewage and garbage, you can't handle nuclear technologies.
- JasonFruit 4y ago
  This sounds like "Great White Father" stuff to me. Are wealthy countries really so suited to telling poorer ones what they may and may not do to join the wealthy?
  - jasmer 4y ago
    Yes. It's imperfect but that's the way it is, it's already in place with 'Nuclear Non Proliferation' [1] and many other things. It's a 'free world' until interests are threatened, then you see where the balance of power is, moreover, there are legitimate issues of responsibility here. Canada, Japan, Ukraine, Brazil, Cameroon - all different places in so many ways, it is what it is. That's diversity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio... EDIT: FYI I'm being a bit tounge-in-cheek with the garbage thing, I realize 'Rich Countries' don't do sewage and garbage perfectly well either, which is partly the point. The other point is that other places are objectively much worse.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  This is the issue with fossil fuel technology in general. In short, we are not responsible enough. If we were fully responsible as people, we could do it. Once rich countries did it, poor countries would demand it, and they are especially unprepared. A bit of economic and political risk and voila, regions devastated. There should be a simple rule: if you can't manage sewage and garbage, you can't handle fossil fuel technologies.
  - deleted 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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corpMaverick 4y ago
Similar accident in Chihuahua Mexico 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... It talks about 4000 people. My father built our house in Chihuahua around 1985-86. Our family lived in that house for 30 years. We don't if we were affected, but it hit me when my sister died of brain cancer two years ago.
- i_am_jl 4y ago
  Similar to both incidents is Kramatorsk, where a Ce-137 capsule was found in an apartment block, embedded inside a concrete wall, after it fell out of a piece of quarry equipment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...
  - klodolph 4y ago
    “Ce” is cerium, it was Cs-137.
- verytrivial 4y ago
  I'm very sorry to hear about your sister.
- huevosabio 4y ago
  I'm from Juarez, Centro Medico de Especialidades was the hospital we all went to back in the day. I only know about this story because my father told me how one of the biggest radioactive accidents happened in Juarez when discussing radioactive events after watching the show Chernobyl.
- timetraveller26 4y ago
  And it was only detected by accident! > On January 16, 1984, a radiation detector at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S. state of New Mexico detected the presence of radioactivity in the vicinity. The detector went off because a truck carrying rebar produced by Achisa had taken an accidental detour and passed through the entrance and exit gate of the laboratory's LAMPF technical area.[6] Local authorities realized that the rebar triggered the alert and notified Mexico's National Commission on Nuclear Safety and Safeguards [es] (CNSNS) on January 18. CNSNS confirmed a wide dispersion of radioactive material had occurred and ordered Achisa to suspend the distribution of manufactured rebar until it was verified that it was not contaminated. Mexican authorities also proceeded to close the junkyard.[4]
verytrivial 4y ago
Warning: People not prepared to read about harm coming to children should probably scroll past this one. I'm still haunted from the first time I read about this.
- unwind 4y ago
  Seconded, I stopped reading at that point. Thanks anyway, good idea to issue a warning.
- jonas21 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - deely3 4y ago
    Whats wrong with warning? Its not like all people on HN should be forced to read all wiki articles about all horrible thing that happens with people.
  - pflenker 4y ago
    What’s wrong with that? I once read the plot of a horror movie on that page and it haunted me for months. And that was even though I fully expected the article to be unpleasant.
    - tiagod 4y ago
      Same here... probably the same movie.....
      - blueflow 4y ago
        You made me curious. Whats the title?
olliej 4y ago
One of the more stupid accidents. Here a judge decided that security of a radioactive source that belong to company A was secondary to a lease agreement with company B, and so contributed to multiple people dying. The people who stole and opened the source obviously shouldn’t have, but given the period I think it’s more reasonable that they didn’t understand what was going on. The judge doesn’t have that excuse.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Strong similarities to the judicial malfeasance leading to the 2022 Beirut explosion: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion#MV_Rhosus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion#MV_Rhosu...>
- xkcd1963 4y ago
  Total failure by the people in charge.
- intrasight 4y ago
  Sad tragedy that is the judge's fault for sure. Hope he or she rots in hell - from radioactive poisoning.
yellow_lead 4y ago
> That night, Devair Alves Ferreira, the owner of the scrapyard, noticed the blue glow from the punctured capsule. Thinking the capsule's contents were valuable or even supernatural, he immediately brought it into his house. Over the next three days, he invited friends and family to view the strange glowing substance. The blue glow of death.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  It really reads like a horror story about stealing a cursed artifact from an ancient tomb.
- labrador 4y ago
  > On September 16, Alves succeeded in puncturing the capsule's aperture window with a screwdriver, allowing him to see a deep blue light coming from the tiny opening he had created. He inserted the screwdriver and successfully scooped out some of the glowing substance. Thinking it was perhaps a type of gunpowder, he tried to light it, but the powder would not ignite. Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Last scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOtApnSjX1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOtApnSjX1Y
MichaelBurge 4y ago
> One of IGR's owners and the clinic's physicist were ordered to pay R$100,000 for the derelict condition of the building. Why were the owners liable? They notified the court and were prevented by the court from removing the machine, so my first thought is they should be blameless: The court assumed control and therefore responsibility.
sneak 4y ago
This, along with the Gimli Glider, are my favorite wikipedia pages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
- cactusplant7374 4y ago
  Why this?
Koshkin 4y ago
Discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586
Trufa 4y ago
For those who can speak Spanish here’s a Uruguayan folk song about the incident https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3YIalaC0M_A&feature=share https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3YIalaC0M_A&feature=share I mean you might like it anyway but the lyrics are central.
- augusto-moura 4y ago
  That was a good surprise, I'm from Goiânia and I would never guess that a Uruguayan song would be made about it.
riffic 4y ago
this happens so ridiculously frequently. look at wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incident...
- garyfirestorm 4y ago
  from that list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident
amelius 4y ago
Anyone having a good reference to a cheap radiation measurement instrument that would catch this?
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  If you're curious, there's some reasonably priced ones on Amazon that might satisfy your curiosity (but are not safety rated or scientifically accurate). If you're actually feeling anxious about this, there's a laundry list of things far more likely to harm you that you can act on right now, such as making sure you have sufficient smoke and CO alarms, a CO2 measurement tool to see if your popular rooms are getting enough fresh air, and a radon detector (though depending on region this may not apply).
- roywiggins 4y ago
  To catch this specific thing, all you'd need is a pair of eyeballs, since it actively glowed...
bloomingeek 4y ago
We humans can screw up anything. Whether it's not protecting others or just not being cautious enough. Why would you ever bring an item that glows and you have absolutely no idea what it is around your family? Shame on the authorities for allowing this to happen in the first place. Their job is to protect society from things they don't/can't understand. And let's not forget money probably accounted for why the source wasn't removed in the first place.
jll29 4y ago
The roughly 150 combined military and civilian incidents that the two respective Wikipedia lists contain demonstrate that 1. military and civilian use of technology both go wrong roughly similarly often (approx. 55% and 45%, respectively) 2. in just about 100 years of "nuclear technology", there have been more than a mean of 1 1/2 incidents per year. I'd be surprised if the Wikipedia list is complete, there are probably substantial numbers of unreported/suppressed incidents, although I expect them to be small (large incidents would have been detected by others measuring radiation).
misterS 4y ago
Plainly Difficult has a nice video about this accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhL0xQzPSy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhL0xQzPSy8
liendolucas 4y ago
They have done a movie about it, and I remember it wasn't bad at all: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259956/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259956/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 Other terrible accidents (not related to the nature of Goiana): * Hisashi Ouchi: Fatal dose beyond imagination. Accident during manually mixing a bucket of radioactive material (yes, you read that right) in a room. They did this in order to bypass the regular procedure to finish the job earlier as they were already delayed. Doctors (if I recall correctly) kept him alive for 2 months while the poor guy was begging to let him go. * Anatoli Bugorski: Literally put his head in a particle accelerator. Happened because a light indication was off when it should have been on. He described seeing the light of a billion suns (or something like that). Survived but with serious consequences.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Not only did he survive, but he’s still alive.
DoreenMichele 4y ago
The Goiânia accident was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil, after a forgotten radiotherapy source was stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city. I wish we would put more emphasis on supporting the body as a means to improve health instead of assaulting the body in the name of assaulting the illness.
Maursault 4y ago
Obligatory.[1] Fox Harris (1936-1988) was a wonderful yet underappreciated actor. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VKzqAefBVY&t=0m38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VKzqAefBVY&t=0m38s
kazinator 4y ago
From the Wikpiedia description, it looks like the IGR owners and doctors were treated badly by the system in their country. They made steps to warn about the radioactive material left behind, but were prevented by a court order and guards from retrieving it. Then in the aftermath, they became defendants in civil litigation and criminal prosecution.
- irjustin 4y ago
  That was incredibly frustrating to read. That they tried and literally got legally blocked and still got pinned with it because someone with clout was scared and made prosecutors go after the ones who tried to prevent issues
sgt101 4y ago
If civilization collapses there will be lots of terrible stories like this over the next 500 years or so as enterprising folks raid old sites and find amazing "treasure".
- nocoiner 4y ago
  There was an instance maybe in the ‘90s where a few hunters found an abandoned Soviet radioisotope thermal generator in the woods and used it to keep warm overnight. I think one or two of them may have ultimately survived, but at least one died and they all suffered terribly.
aarchi 4y ago
> Other contamination was also found in or on: three buses, 42 houses, fourteen cars, five pigs, and 50,000 rolls of toilet paper Why such a large figure for toilet paper? Is it somehow more easily contaminated by radiation?
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  Probably something like: - radioactive source somehow got inside a tree - tree and source are ground to pulp in a large batch to make paper - large batch of pulp makes approx 50,000 rolls of TP
ummonk 4y ago
The lead-up to the accident reminds me of the Beirut explosion where customs officials kept asking judges for permission to resell / dispose off the dangerously stored fertilizer for several years but judges refused to act. Bureaucracy is so absurd sometimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion#MV_Rhosus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion#MV_Rhosu...
- rlt 4y ago
  > Bureaucracy is so absurd sometimes. Kafkaesque, you might say.
marcosvm 4y ago
What's also bad about this incident is that it was hidden from the public during a weekend because they were having a Moto GP that weekend and didn't want the publicity.
Slava_Propanei 4y ago
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sebosp 4y ago
Plainly difficult channel covered it at some point https://youtu.be/nhL0xQzPSy8 https://youtu.be/nhL0xQzPSy8 I remember liking the explanation/event breakdown, curious why this short documentary link is not in the Wikipedia article
Pxtl 4y ago
There's a pretty good Well There's Your Problem episode about it (dirtbag-left podcast-with-slides about industrial disasters). Goes into detail day by day about the events, including celebrating some of the heroes of the story who probably saved countless lives. https://youtu.be/34rdxDgpaaA https://youtu.be/34rdxDgpaaA
weinzierl 4y ago
The Goiânia accident was certainly extraordinary but I was surprised to learn from a recent Guardian article how common the loss of radioactive sources actually is. There, Dr Edward Obbard an expert from UNSW Sidney university was interviewed on the occasion of the lost capsule in Australia. The article says: "The search for the missing capsule captured the world’s imagination, but Obbard says radioactive material goes awol about 100 times a year around the world." Also the fact that there are at least eight nuclear bombs that have been lost and never found is always chilling. And these are only the ones from western countries we know about... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/03/relatively-common-was-lost-and-found-radioactive-capsule-not-the-only-missing-material-around https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/03/relative...
kgeist 4y ago
Reminds of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_acci... >The capsule was originally part of a radiation level gauge and was lost in the Karansky quarry in the late 1970s. The search for the capsule was unsuccessful and ended after a week. The gravel from the quarry was used in construction.The caesium capsule ended up in the concrete panel of apartment 85 of building 7 on Mariyi Pryimachenko Street >By the time the capsule was discovered, four residents of the building had died from it and 17 more had received varying doses of radiation.

298 points by joering2 4y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586

>In the consequent cleanup operation...All the objects from within those houses, including personal possessions, were seized and incinerated. whose idea was this? incinerating things contaminated with radioactive material seems like the a really unsafe thing to do!

rpigab 4y ago

I know there are probably tons of horrible accidents related to radioactive material, but I wonder if this one inspired Matt Groening when he created The Simpsons between 1987 and 1989, with the famous opening sequence where Homer gets an uranium rod fall into the back of his protection suit and unknowningly brings it home. I'm no Simpsons expert so I don't know if the incident was part of a longer episode because you can't see the consequences of such an accident in the short opening sequence, but I think it's enough to get people to ask questions about this glowing green thing, if you don't already know about radioactivity. Maybe because the Simpsons became worldwide famous and one of the most popular shows ever, many people all around the world especially children are more aware of radioactive hazards, even when school systens fail to teach them about their danger.

deleted 4y ago

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warent 4y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586

deleted 4y ago
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dang 4y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: The Goiânia Accident (1987) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 - Nov 2021 (121 comments) Goiânia Accident - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664402 - June 2020 (2 comments)

oskob 4y ago

An excellent video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3NJXGSIIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3NJXGSIIA

TremendousJudge 4y ago
Well There's Your Problem has an episode on the incident as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34rdxDgpaaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34rdxDgpaaA

realworldperson 4y ago

[dead]

dom96 4y ago

> He soon developed a burn on his hand in the same size and shape as the aperture – he eventually underwent partial amputation of several fingers. > On September 15, Pereira visited a local clinic, where his symptoms were diagnosed as the result of something he had eaten; he was told to return home and rest. Hopefully the partial amputation occurred after the visit, otherwise I would really love to know what the clinic thought he ate that could cause partial amputation!

BizarroLand 4y ago
"You ate something so we need to cut off your fingers" is a sentence I hope is never spoken aloud to anyone ever.
- r2_pilot 4y ago
  I'm posting a yahoo page about it because of a text preference for HN, but the Chubbyemu YouTube video is mildly terrifying. It's my understanding that this sort of thing is vanishingly rare, but serves as a reminder that it's better to have modern medicine than not. https://news.yahoo.com/teenager-legs-fingers-amputated-eating-033108656.html https://news.yahoo.com/teenager-legs-fingers-amputated-eatin...
  - dom96 4y ago
    wow, so it totally is possible to lose your fingers after eating something. This also show the importance of vaccination and makes me wonder: how do I know if I missed some vaccines as a kid? how do I know whether I need a booster of something since school?
    - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
      Get your medical records and visit a doctor?
  - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
    https://archive.is/KKrYN https://archive.is/KKrYN >> both of his legs and and all ten fingers amputated > better to have modern medicine than not Fuck no! Never let modern medicine butcher me like that.

dylan604 4y ago

In light of the little bitty thing lost/found in Australia, this is a good example of why they spent such an effort to find it. Forget making dirty bombs, just have a "committed to the cause" person just carry something like this around as they tour the city. At least a dirty bomb would be obvious something happened, and people could know how/why they were getting sick in the aftermath. This kind of thing would be the worst example of Silent But Deadly. Once the committed to the cause person was too affected from doing the work themselves, just have the next member pick up and carry on the mission. Ammo that never needs reloading. You just have to reload the delivery mechanisms.

gus_massa 4y ago
I asked in a previous thread about the relative strength of the device in Goiânia and the recent device in Australia. cosama replied: > The wikipedia article you linked mentioned that the Goiânia source was 50.9 TBq (1,380 Ci) when lost, the source in question here [in Australia] is probably 1-10 mCi, so about a million times weaker. See this other thread about the incidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34549126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34549126 .
- mrexroad 4y ago
  Thanks, appreciate you posting it here. Was skimming for that comparison but didn’t see it.
- rimunroe 4y ago
  The source in Australia was about 19 GBq (514 mCi) according to https://www.aap.com.au/news/search-for-radioactive-capsule-in-outback/ https://www.aap.com.au/news/search-for-radioactive-capsule-i...
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    50.9 TBq / 19 GBq = 50,000 GBq / 20 GBq = 2,500. Can I round it to 1000? Thanks for the data. So it's 1000 weaker, not 1000000 weaker.

major505 4y ago

I remember this when I was a kid. Most amazing was that the federal goverment didn't had a protocol to deal with things like that, even at the time we where building our second nuclear power plant. But the military was aable to perform a fast response for the incident. And shows that even if nuclear energy is the future, we could never understimate it.

garyfirestorm 4y ago
can you clarify 'even at the time we where building our second nuclear power plant'
- igortg 4y ago
  Brazil has only 3 nuclear power plants. The accident occurred when the second one was being built.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    Brazil has only 2 nuclear power plants. The third planned one has large funding issues and construction is on-hold.
    - major505 4y ago
      Yes. Angra 1 and Angra 2. The only company that had the know how in constructions like that was involved in the Petrolão, the scandal involving bribes and and money laundry in contructions for the country national oil company, and the company was basically nuked. Now chinese contruction companies are taking the place in the market.

jeoqn 4y ago

[flagged]

marcosdumay 4y ago
So... You just lost your empathy for ~200 people?
voakbasda 4y ago
It was not forgotten. It was neglected by the government, which then then tried to blame the owners that had been begging for months for someone to address the issue. The government actively prohibited them from removing it.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  The owners also neglected to properly secure the device. In their place I'd have at the very least seal the room with a brick wall.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    How are you going to get permission to erect a brick wall when you are barred from entering the grounds to retrieve the device?
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      Securing the radioactive source is always priority number one.
rbanffy 4y ago
The person who forgot to remove it from the device was not among the people who died.
- jeoqn 4y ago
  [flagged]

msie 4y ago

I saw a video depiction of the incident that wasn't listed in the wikipedia. Does anyone recall?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

iamgopal 4y ago

Pardon my ignorance but How could any radioactive material whose half life is 30 year could survive billions of years on earth and still be radioactive?

jerf 4y ago
You are correct. It can't. It is made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137#Uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137#Uses "As an almost purely human-made isotope, caesium-137 has been used to date wine and detect counterfeits and as a relative-dating material for assessing the age of sedimentation occurring after 1945."
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  This reminds me of a cottage industry that developed to recover iron/steel from shipwrecks that sunk before atmospheric nuclear tests began. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
jl6 4y ago
It hadn’t survived for billions of years, it was made of caesium-137 which was manufactured in a nuclear reactor.
vandahm 4y ago
Cesium-137 is made in nuclear reactors, but some radioactive isotopes with shorter half lives (well, short compared to the age of the Earth) exist in nature because they are a product of the natural radioactive decay of other, long-lived materials like Uranium.
Sharlin 4y ago
It took us a few hundred years, but we did finally realize the alchemists' dream of transmuting elements into other elements. It's just a little expensive.

haunter 4y ago

Here is the IAEA report from 1988 https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub815_web.pdf https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub815_web.pd... (mind you with some injury photos too)

koch 4y ago

I found this one[0] the other day where a radiation source ended up in the concrete wall of an apartment building. A whole family got leukemia, took 9 years to eventually have it removed. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...

KronisLV 4y ago
> I found this one[0] the other day where a radiation source ended up in the concrete wall of an apartment building. A whole family got leukemia, took 9 years to eventually have it removed. I actually considered whether I should post this or not, but there's a game that deals with this subject matter, called Bright Lights of Svetlov: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1630920/Bright_Lights_of_Svetlov/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1630920/Bright_Lights_of_... It's setup as one of those "walking simulators" where you experience fragments of life in the Soviet Union from the perspectives of multiple people, but with a plot twist and tragedy looming around the corner. If nothing else, going into it the first time without knowing the story behind it was a curious experience. For those less interested in actually playing the thing, there's an article called "This new Russian adventure game nails 1980s USSR" that goes into more detail: https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/334455-bright-lights-svetlov-1980s-ussr https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/334455-bright-lights-svetlov-...
cxf12 4y ago
The awful irony is that these teletherapy devices are used to treat cancer when used improperly will cause it.
- cobaltoxide 4y ago
  Reminds me of "the dose makes the poison"
- hwillis 4y ago
  Chemotherapy too, since it usually causes DNA damage (cancers replicate quickly, so DNA damage affects them more). Very aggressive treatment has double-digit odds of giving you a new, additional cancer.

jasmer 4y ago

This is the issue with nuclear in general. In short, we are not responsible enough. If we were fully responsible as people, we could do it. Once rich countries did it, poor countries would demand it, and they are especially unprepared. A bit of economic and political risk and voila, regions devastated. There should be a simple rule: if you can't manage sewage and garbage, you can't handle nuclear technologies.

JasonFruit 4y ago
This sounds like "Great White Father" stuff to me. Are wealthy countries really so suited to telling poorer ones what they may and may not do to join the wealthy?
- jasmer 4y ago
  Yes. It's imperfect but that's the way it is, it's already in place with 'Nuclear Non Proliferation' [1] and many other things. It's a 'free world' until interests are threatened, then you see where the balance of power is, moreover, there are legitimate issues of responsibility here. Canada, Japan, Ukraine, Brazil, Cameroon - all different places in so many ways, it is what it is. That's diversity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio... EDIT: FYI I'm being a bit tounge-in-cheek with the garbage thing, I realize 'Rich Countries' don't do sewage and garbage perfectly well either, which is partly the point. The other point is that other places are objectively much worse.
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
This is the issue with fossil fuel technology in general. In short, we are not responsible enough. If we were fully responsible as people, we could do it. Once rich countries did it, poor countries would demand it, and they are especially unprepared. A bit of economic and political risk and voila, regions devastated. There should be a simple rule: if you can't manage sewage and garbage, you can't handle fossil fuel technologies.
- deleted 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

corpMaverick 4y ago

Similar accident in Chihuahua Mexico 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... It talks about 4000 people. My father built our house in Chihuahua around 1985-86. Our family lived in that house for 30 years. We don't if we were affected, but it hit me when my sister died of brain cancer two years ago.

i_am_jl 4y ago
Similar to both incidents is Kramatorsk, where a Ce-137 capsule was found in an apartment block, embedded inside a concrete wall, after it fell out of a piece of quarry equipment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...
- klodolph 4y ago
  “Ce” is cerium, it was Cs-137.
verytrivial 4y ago
I'm very sorry to hear about your sister.
huevosabio 4y ago
I'm from Juarez, Centro Medico de Especialidades was the hospital we all went to back in the day. I only know about this story because my father told me how one of the biggest radioactive accidents happened in Juarez when discussing radioactive events after watching the show Chernobyl.
timetraveller26 4y ago
And it was only detected by accident! > On January 16, 1984, a radiation detector at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S. state of New Mexico detected the presence of radioactivity in the vicinity. The detector went off because a truck carrying rebar produced by Achisa had taken an accidental detour and passed through the entrance and exit gate of the laboratory's LAMPF technical area.[6] Local authorities realized that the rebar triggered the alert and notified Mexico's National Commission on Nuclear Safety and Safeguards [es] (CNSNS) on January 18. CNSNS confirmed a wide dispersion of radioactive material had occurred and ordered Achisa to suspend the distribution of manufactured rebar until it was verified that it was not contaminated. Mexican authorities also proceeded to close the junkyard.[4]

verytrivial 4y ago

Warning: People not prepared to read about harm coming to children should probably scroll past this one. I'm still haunted from the first time I read about this.

unwind 4y ago
Seconded, I stopped reading at that point. Thanks anyway, good idea to issue a warning.
jonas21 4y ago
[flagged]
- deely3 4y ago
  Whats wrong with warning? Its not like all people on HN should be forced to read all wiki articles about all horrible thing that happens with people.
- pflenker 4y ago
  What’s wrong with that? I once read the plot of a horror movie on that page and it haunted me for months. And that was even though I fully expected the article to be unpleasant.
  - tiagod 4y ago
    Same here... probably the same movie.....
    - blueflow 4y ago
      You made me curious. Whats the title?

olliej 4y ago

One of the more stupid accidents. Here a judge decided that security of a radioactive source that belong to company A was secondary to a lease agreement with company B, and so contributed to multiple people dying. The people who stole and opened the source obviously shouldn’t have, but given the period I think it’s more reasonable that they didn’t understand what was going on. The judge doesn’t have that excuse.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Strong similarities to the judicial malfeasance leading to the 2022 Beirut explosion: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion#MV_Rhosus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion#MV_Rhosu...>
xkcd1963 4y ago
Total failure by the people in charge.
intrasight 4y ago
Sad tragedy that is the judge's fault for sure. Hope he or she rots in hell - from radioactive poisoning.

yellow_lead 4y ago

> That night, Devair Alves Ferreira, the owner of the scrapyard, noticed the blue glow from the punctured capsule. Thinking the capsule's contents were valuable or even supernatural, he immediately brought it into his house. Over the next three days, he invited friends and family to view the strange glowing substance. The blue glow of death.

TremendousJudge 4y ago
It really reads like a horror story about stealing a cursed artifact from an ancient tomb.
labrador 4y ago
> On September 16, Alves succeeded in puncturing the capsule's aperture window with a screwdriver, allowing him to see a deep blue light coming from the tiny opening he had created. He inserted the screwdriver and successfully scooped out some of the glowing substance. Thinking it was perhaps a type of gunpowder, he tried to light it, but the powder would not ignite. Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Last scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOtApnSjX1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOtApnSjX1Y

MichaelBurge 4y ago

> One of IGR's owners and the clinic's physicist were ordered to pay R$100,000 for the derelict condition of the building. Why were the owners liable? They notified the court and were prevented by the court from removing the machine, so my first thought is they should be blameless: The court assumed control and therefore responsibility.

sneak 4y ago

This, along with the Gimli Glider, are my favorite wikipedia pages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

cactusplant7374 4y ago
Why this?

Koshkin 4y ago

Discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586

Trufa 4y ago

For those who can speak Spanish here’s a Uruguayan folk song about the incident https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3YIalaC0M_A&feature=share https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3YIalaC0M_A&feature=share I mean you might like it anyway but the lyrics are central.

augusto-moura 4y ago
That was a good surprise, I'm from Goiânia and I would never guess that a Uruguayan song would be made about it.

riffic 4y ago

this happens so ridiculously frequently. look at wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incident...

garyfirestorm 4y ago
from that list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident

amelius 4y ago

Anyone having a good reference to a cheap radiation measurement instrument that would catch this?

Waterluvian 4y ago
If you're curious, there's some reasonably priced ones on Amazon that might satisfy your curiosity (but are not safety rated or scientifically accurate). If you're actually feeling anxious about this, there's a laundry list of things far more likely to harm you that you can act on right now, such as making sure you have sufficient smoke and CO alarms, a CO2 measurement tool to see if your popular rooms are getting enough fresh air, and a radon detector (though depending on region this may not apply).
roywiggins 4y ago
To catch this specific thing, all you'd need is a pair of eyeballs, since it actively glowed...

bloomingeek 4y ago

We humans can screw up anything. Whether it's not protecting others or just not being cautious enough. Why would you ever bring an item that glows and you have absolutely no idea what it is around your family? Shame on the authorities for allowing this to happen in the first place. Their job is to protect society from things they don't/can't understand. And let's not forget money probably accounted for why the source wasn't removed in the first place.

jll29 4y ago

The roughly 150 combined military and civilian incidents that the two respective Wikipedia lists contain demonstrate that 1. military and civilian use of technology both go wrong roughly similarly often (approx. 55% and 45%, respectively) 2. in just about 100 years of "nuclear technology", there have been more than a mean of 1 1/2 incidents per year. I'd be surprised if the Wikipedia list is complete, there are probably substantial numbers of unreported/suppressed incidents, although I expect them to be small (large incidents would have been detected by others measuring radiation).

misterS 4y ago

Plainly Difficult has a nice video about this accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhL0xQzPSy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhL0xQzPSy8

liendolucas 4y ago

They have done a movie about it, and I remember it wasn't bad at all: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259956/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259956/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 Other terrible accidents (not related to the nature of Goiana): * Hisashi Ouchi: Fatal dose beyond imagination. Accident during manually mixing a bucket of radioactive material (yes, you read that right) in a room. They did this in order to bypass the regular procedure to finish the job earlier as they were already delayed. Doctors (if I recall correctly) kept him alive for 2 months while the poor guy was begging to let him go. * Anatoli Bugorski: Literally put his head in a particle accelerator. Happened because a light indication was off when it should have been on. He described seeing the light of a billion suns (or something like that). Survived but with serious consequences.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
Not only did he survive, but he’s still alive.

DoreenMichele 4y ago

The Goiânia accident was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil, after a forgotten radiotherapy source was stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city. I wish we would put more emphasis on supporting the body as a means to improve health instead of assaulting the body in the name of assaulting the illness.

Maursault 4y ago

Obligatory.[1] Fox Harris (1936-1988) was a wonderful yet underappreciated actor. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VKzqAefBVY&t=0m38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VKzqAefBVY&t=0m38s

kazinator 4y ago

From the Wikpiedia description, it looks like the IGR owners and doctors were treated badly by the system in their country. They made steps to warn about the radioactive material left behind, but were prevented by a court order and guards from retrieving it. Then in the aftermath, they became defendants in civil litigation and criminal prosecution.

irjustin 4y ago
That was incredibly frustrating to read. That they tried and literally got legally blocked and still got pinned with it because someone with clout was scared and made prosecutors go after the ones who tried to prevent issues

sgt101 4y ago

If civilization collapses there will be lots of terrible stories like this over the next 500 years or so as enterprising folks raid old sites and find amazing "treasure".

nocoiner 4y ago
There was an instance maybe in the ‘90s where a few hunters found an abandoned Soviet radioisotope thermal generator in the woods and used it to keep warm overnight. I think one or two of them may have ultimately survived, but at least one died and they all suffered terribly.

aarchi 4y ago

> Other contamination was also found in or on: three buses, 42 houses, fourteen cars, five pigs, and 50,000 rolls of toilet paper Why such a large figure for toilet paper? Is it somehow more easily contaminated by radiation?

rolenthedeep 4y ago
Probably something like: - radioactive source somehow got inside a tree - tree and source are ground to pulp in a large batch to make paper - large batch of pulp makes approx 50,000 rolls of TP

ummonk 4y ago

The lead-up to the accident reminds me of the Beirut explosion where customs officials kept asking judges for permission to resell / dispose off the dangerously stored fertilizer for several years but judges refused to act. Bureaucracy is so absurd sometimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion#MV_Rhosus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion#MV_Rhosu...

rlt 4y ago
> Bureaucracy is so absurd sometimes. Kafkaesque, you might say.

marcosvm 4y ago

What's also bad about this incident is that it was hidden from the public during a weekend because they were having a Moto GP that weekend and didn't want the publicity.

Slava_Propanei 4y ago

[dead]

sebosp 4y ago

Plainly difficult channel covered it at some point https://youtu.be/nhL0xQzPSy8 https://youtu.be/nhL0xQzPSy8 I remember liking the explanation/event breakdown, curious why this short documentary link is not in the Wikipedia article

Pxtl 4y ago

There's a pretty good Well There's Your Problem episode about it (dirtbag-left podcast-with-slides about industrial disasters). Goes into detail day by day about the events, including celebrating some of the heroes of the story who probably saved countless lives. https://youtu.be/34rdxDgpaaA https://youtu.be/34rdxDgpaaA

weinzierl 4y ago

The Goiânia accident was certainly extraordinary but I was surprised to learn from a recent Guardian article how common the loss of radioactive sources actually is. There, Dr Edward Obbard an expert from UNSW Sidney university was interviewed on the occasion of the lost capsule in Australia. The article says: "The search for the missing capsule captured the world’s imagination, but Obbard says radioactive material goes awol about 100 times a year around the world." Also the fact that there are at least eight nuclear bombs that have been lost and never found is always chilling. And these are only the ones from western countries we know about... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/03/relatively-common-was-lost-and-found-radioactive-capsule-not-the-only-missing-material-around https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/03/relative...

kgeist 4y ago

Reminds of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_acci... >The capsule was originally part of a radiation level gauge and was lost in the Karansky quarry in the late 1970s. The search for the capsule was unsuccessful and ended after a week. The gravel from the quarry was used in construction.The caesium capsule ended up in the concrete panel of apartment 85 of building 7 on Mariyi Pryimachenko Street >By the time the capsule was discovered, four residents of the building had died from it and 17 more had received varying doses of radiation.