5 ms·

Not dangerous unless broken up and ingested, but need to be kept out of the food chain. No worse than a NiCad in that respect. Probably better, if anyt

by saulrh 2y ago

Not dangerous unless broken up and ingested, but need to be kept out of the food chain. No worse than a NiCad in that respect. Probably better, if anything, since it's so much easier to detect and track.

giantg2 2y ago
And set off all the NBC detectors on the highways near major cities.
- arcticbull 2y ago
  Well yes but only if destroyed. Then wouldn’t you call that a feature? When in their enclosures there should be no radiation.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    No way could all the alerts be tracked.
    - jacobgkau 2y ago
      Yeah, you bring up another angle to look at it from: even if the alerts didn't go off when the batteries are being used/stored properly, it would make it easy to create a lot of noise/false positives as part of an actual attack (were those batteries to be readily available).
      - arcticbull 2y ago
        They were for a long time, betavoltaics were used in pacemakers. They started using more conventional batteries because the betavoltaics far outlasted the actual pacemakers.
        jacobgkau 2y ago
        That's interesting. I imagine parts for an internal medical device would be able to be more tightly controlled than batteries for general usage, but maybe I'm wrong.
- thadt 2y ago
  Not Nickel-63 - Beta particles don’t go very far in air, and are shielded by almost anything. You’ll be unlikely to be alarming on beta emitters anywhere, unless they’re right up against your specialized Beta detector.
  - KiwiJohnno 2y ago
    My understanding is, the danger with Beta emitters is if they are broken up into dust, and you breathe the dust in (or eat/drink it) then you are toast, as your lungs and internal organs get a small, but continuous bombardment of Beta particles which will eventually give you cancer. If you are contaminated internally, with radioactive dust then there is no way to fix that.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Also nearly impossible to detect. No roadside detector will, anyway.
hilbert42 2y ago
Without going into too many specifics, for a period during my career I was involved with an organization whose responsibility it is to track nuclear materials and keep them under safe surveillance—in fact my job had the words 'surveillance engineer' in its title. I say that only bring to your attention how difficult this would be in practice. Putting safety aside for a moment, in most countries the regulatory restrictions are enormous because they are signatories to the NPT—Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons which tightly bind them to how they use and handle nuclear materials. This involves, use, tracking, short and long-term disposal thereof not to mention how to keep radioactive materials away from bad actors/those who've ill intent. With safety, there are so many issues involved that I can hardly even mention them here. Just as an illustration, the once lack of regulations covering the manufacture and use of luminous radium paint turned out to be a disaster. I've thought about this a great deal, whenever the batteries in my flashlight die I wish I had some nuclear powered ones and evey time I'm brought back to reality when I think how difficult it would be to implement in practice.
- saulrh 2y ago
  I meant precisely what I said. Tracking NiCads to the standards of the NPT would presumably be impossible. If your standard is "keep it out of the food supply", though, I guarantee that there's a little bit of NiCad in that hot dog in your fridge, and there'd be much less NiCad in your hot dog if they tripped a radiation detector before they hit the incinerator or the landfill.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    I've always said that I'm more afraid of heavy metal contamination then nuclear material contamination. There are no hand held devices which will tell you if the soil you're vaguely near has heavy metals in it, nor how much.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      There are no hand held devices which will tell you if the soil you're vaguely near has heavy metals in it, nor how much. Well, technically, there are, but now you're back in the ionizing-radiation business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdfHVcU8U7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdfHVcU8U7U
FooBarWidget 2y ago
I regularly see thrown away batteries on the streets of Amsterdam. This worries me.
xtiansimon 2y ago
Meanwhile and just a few days ago… “Rising rates of cancer in young people prompts hunt for environmental culprit (ft.com)” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41178776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41178776
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
I think a NiCad is a lot less dangerous if it does get broken up. Once such devices are ubiquitous, that means improperly handled/disposed ones will also be ubiquitous.

by saulrh 2y ago

giantg2 2y ago

And set off all the NBC detectors on the highways near major cities.

arcticbull 2y ago
Well yes but only if destroyed. Then wouldn’t you call that a feature? When in their enclosures there should be no radiation.
- giantg2 2y ago
  No way could all the alerts be tracked.
  - jacobgkau 2y ago
    Yeah, you bring up another angle to look at it from: even if the alerts didn't go off when the batteries are being used/stored properly, it would make it easy to create a lot of noise/false positives as part of an actual attack (were those batteries to be readily available).
    - arcticbull 2y ago
      They were for a long time, betavoltaics were used in pacemakers. They started using more conventional batteries because the betavoltaics far outlasted the actual pacemakers.
      - jacobgkau 2y ago
        That's interesting. I imagine parts for an internal medical device would be able to be more tightly controlled than batteries for general usage, but maybe I'm wrong.
thadt 2y ago
Not Nickel-63 - Beta particles don’t go very far in air, and are shielded by almost anything. You’ll be unlikely to be alarming on beta emitters anywhere, unless they’re right up against your specialized Beta detector.
- KiwiJohnno 2y ago
  My understanding is, the danger with Beta emitters is if they are broken up into dust, and you breathe the dust in (or eat/drink it) then you are toast, as your lungs and internal organs get a small, but continuous bombardment of Beta particles which will eventually give you cancer. If you are contaminated internally, with radioactive dust then there is no way to fix that.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Also nearly impossible to detect. No roadside detector will, anyway.

hilbert42 2y ago

Without going into too many specifics, for a period during my career I was involved with an organization whose responsibility it is to track nuclear materials and keep them under safe surveillance—in fact my job had the words 'surveillance engineer' in its title. I say that only bring to your attention how difficult this would be in practice. Putting safety aside for a moment, in most countries the regulatory restrictions are enormous because they are signatories to the NPT—Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons which tightly bind them to how they use and handle nuclear materials. This involves, use, tracking, short and long-term disposal thereof not to mention how to keep radioactive materials away from bad actors/those who've ill intent. With safety, there are so many issues involved that I can hardly even mention them here. Just as an illustration, the once lack of regulations covering the manufacture and use of luminous radium paint turned out to be a disaster. I've thought about this a great deal, whenever the batteries in my flashlight die I wish I had some nuclear powered ones and evey time I'm brought back to reality when I think how difficult it would be to implement in practice.

saulrh 2y ago
I meant precisely what I said. Tracking NiCads to the standards of the NPT would presumably be impossible. If your standard is "keep it out of the food supply", though, I guarantee that there's a little bit of NiCad in that hot dog in your fridge, and there'd be much less NiCad in your hot dog if they tripped a radiation detector before they hit the incinerator or the landfill.
- XorNot 2y ago
  I've always said that I'm more afraid of heavy metal contamination then nuclear material contamination. There are no hand held devices which will tell you if the soil you're vaguely near has heavy metals in it, nor how much.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    There are no hand held devices which will tell you if the soil you're vaguely near has heavy metals in it, nor how much. Well, technically, there are, but now you're back in the ionizing-radiation business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdfHVcU8U7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdfHVcU8U7U

FooBarWidget 2y ago

I regularly see thrown away batteries on the streets of Amsterdam. This worries me.

xtiansimon 2y ago

Meanwhile and just a few days ago… “Rising rates of cancer in young people prompts hunt for environmental culprit (ft.com)” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41178776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41178776

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

I think a NiCad is a lot less dangerous if it does get broken up. Once such devices are ubiquitous, that means improperly handled/disposed ones will also be ubiquitous.