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Can you say anything about how radiation detection occurs? I'm specifically interested in the idea that the carrier was in irradiated water for a long time. D

Can you say anything about how radiation detection occurs? I'm specifically interested in the idea that the carrier was in irradiated water for a long time. Do the radiation sensors in the ship really need to be 'turned on' in a long process? Would there be any geiger counter or something that automatically detects whether the water the ship takes in is tainted? It seems crazy to me that there wouldn't be an always-on, cheap, sanity check.

karlkatzke 13y ago
That was the part of the article that jumped out at me. I live in a university town. Various parts of the research arms of the university have various radiological materials on hand for experiments or ongoing work. There's an old, decommissioned nuclear reactor near the airport. ALL of the people who work in these facilities wear dosimeters that change color if an incident resulting in overexposure occurs. ALL of the emergency response teams in the area (campus police, county, city, city fire, and county volunteer fire) have a geiger counter on each truck -- there is a mini one that is just a box on the trucks, and the hazmat trailer with the chem suits has a bigger and more sensitive one with a wand. And this is just a small town research university kind of place, not a big government warship that's designed to fight nuclear wars. On top of that, I'm 99% sure that distilling water removes the radioactive contaminants.
dctoedt 13y ago
I don't know what today's Navy ships have by way of always-on ambient radiation detectors, and to be honest I don't remember exactly what we had in my day; I'm sure I learned it while qualifying, but my day-to-day duties were in other areas. I can say that even in my day we were constantly monitoring ambient conditions -- and one of the things we constantly drummed into each other was to look for trends, not just instantaneous readings (life isn't a snapshot, it's a movie).

karlkatzke 13y ago

That was the part of the article that jumped out at me. I live in a university town. Various parts of the research arms of the university have various radiological materials on hand for experiments or ongoing work. There's an old, decommissioned nuclear reactor near the airport. ALL of the people who work in these facilities wear dosimeters that change color if an incident resulting in overexposure occurs. ALL of the emergency response teams in the area (campus police, county, city, city fire, and county volunteer fire) have a geiger counter on each truck -- there is a mini one that is just a box on the trucks, and the hazmat trailer with the chem suits has a bigger and more sensitive one with a wand. And this is just a small town research university kind of place, not a big government warship that's designed to fight nuclear wars. On top of that, I'm 99% sure that distilling water removes the radioactive contaminants.

dctoedt 13y ago

I don't know what today's Navy ships have by way of always-on ambient radiation detectors, and to be honest I don't remember exactly what we had in my day; I'm sure I learned it while qualifying, but my day-to-day duties were in other areas. I can say that even in my day we were constantly monitoring ambient conditions -- and one of the things we constantly drummed into each other was to look for trends, not just instantaneous readings (life isn't a snapshot, it's a movie).