Discarded Strontium-90 Found in ex-USSR 59
andaru writes: "The BBC is running this story about discarded canisters of strontium-90 found in the woods in Georgia, ex-USSR. It goes on to mention the possibility of a "dirty bomb," which would contaminate a large populated area (like cracking one open in the Great Lakes)." Some simple advice: if you find a random container, anywhere, that has melted the surrounding snow, don't mess with it, mmmkay?
Praise Darwin! (Score:1)
Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any other potential uses for that particular material than a "dirty bomb"? Prefferably something CONstructive?
mmm... self-powered pc with a small nuclear reactor at it's core..
Re:Praise Darwin! (Score:1)
On a more practical note, This sort of technology was used to power space probes by generating heat and converting that (very inefficiently) to electricity. But that application isnt practical earthbound, where other forms of energy are plentyfull and far safer.
The only constructive earthbound use I can see for this material is nuclear research in the laborotory. Maybe. I wonder if it is possible to use it in reprocessing, even just to convert the material to something safer.
Re:Praise Darwin! (Score:1)
Perhaps you're thinking of that kid who had his own Reader's Digest story. You know, the "super smart" kid who super smartly irradiated himself and his entire neighborhood? Well, I'm not that guy. Nor am I anywhere near the former USSR, so it's moot regardless.
And it was funny, you simply left your sense of humor in your other jeans.. or at least you should hope so. *snicker*
Re:Praise Darwin! (Score:1)
As for a power source, it wouldnt work. These things might be fairly hot in that they are putting out a large amount of radiation, but thats not a usefull form of energy. What happens is the radioactive decay of Strontium (the products of which, are probably also dangerous, and possibly gaseous) is composed of various particles. Heat is produced when these particles smash into outside particles and release their kinetic energy.
So the conversion to heat is already inefficient, but heat has very poor energy concentration, so converting this into electricity is far less efficient as well.
I doubt youd get more than a few milliwatts through radioactive decay. Fission is different ofcourse, but Strontium-90 cant undergo fission.
Re:Praise Darwin! (Score:1)
Do you knitpick television programs as well? My post was for amusement purposes only. In other words, "it was not a serious suggestion".
Re:Praise Darwin! (Score:1)
I do feel sorry for some people, however. I feel quite sorry for you.. but moreso your parents. Drowning at birth seems more and more appealing lately, the more moronic the generations after are becoming.
Also, as an aside, learn how to fucking type. You don't need to hit 'enter' when your text hits the right side of the entry box.
Re:Praise Darwin! (Score:1)
Come along then, back up your words. Post under a *REAL* account, let's see if you've even got ball one to show yourself when you speak.
Even if I am an asshole, I come by it honestly. What's you're fucking excuse? Did you get fed by your grandfather's dick when you were little or something?
As to any children I may have, that's none of your concern whatsoever. Most especially when you hide behind anonymity to speak. As I said before, you are a fucking coward.
ummm (Score:1)
Re:ummm (Score:1)
When you hear about plutonium being used as a dirty bomb, its not because its radioactive. Plutonium is HIGHLY toxic chemically, and can cause sickness and death even in small amounts.
Of course, the radioactivity isnt healthy either, and even if diluted to the volume of Lake superior, if you ate fish for a year from the lake, you would end up with a far higher concentration in your thyroid than the lake concentration. That is of course, if there was any fish left.
Re:ummm (Score:2, Funny)
Re:ummm (Score:1)
What is the thought proccess? (Score:4, Troll)
I am beginning to wonder if the "red" in Russia wasn't referring to the communists but to ther rednecks...
:)
Re:What is the thought proccess? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What is the thought proccess? (Score:1)
Re:What is the thought proccess? (Score:1)
So when a communist (or other) state is achieved through violence it is not surprising that the people more accepting of violence to others rise to the top. And so it's not surprising you end up with a dictatorship.
And with violence entwined in the architecture it's a lot harder to change things for the better.
Same for other belief systems that advocate violence.
Re:What is the thought proccess? (Score:1)
Re:What is the thought proccess? (Score:2)
Steel mills that use scrap metal now have radiation detectors to prevent the accidental inclusion of radioactive scrap in their steel.
Re:What is the thought proccess? (Score:1)
I don't know why people are so paraniod about nuclear power. Nuclear power has an excellent safety record. People die in coal-mine accidents all the time, but that doesn't get on slashdot. It's just when two people are moderately injured by stronium does it make the news.
Re:What is the thought proccess? (Score:2)
An interesing related note, the three japanese workers who caused a criticality accident a couple of years ago at a fuel processing facility in japan saw a blue flash and glow when the criticality initiated. This blue flash and glow was not from the material but rather the production of light from the water in the aqeuous humor inside their eyeballs while exposed to intense gamma radiation.
Fascinatingly creepy no?
U.S. Army. (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, it took just one near-disaster to elucidate the relative foolhardiness of allowing grunts to operate thermonuclear devices beyond relatively no-brainer artillery shells.
So now only the Navy gets nuclear power plants--the army is stuck with diesel.
I wonder if this Soviet thing was from some sort of portable genny their military used?
Re:U.S. Army. (Score:2)
Two corrections, it wasn't thermonuclear - it was simply nuclear, and these aren't grunts we are talking about, it was run by highly trained operators of the same caliber as the ones manning Naval plants today and then.
Weapon caches (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Security through obscurity (Score:2)
The deceptive coloring (camouflage, disinformation, etc.) wouldn't stop a serious attacker, but it would stop a casual one. Nobody denies that deceptive coloring can be a powerful tool. Unfortunately in the software world it's usually hard or impossible to do this - a link in a 1x1 pixel sounds hard to find... until you remember that it's in plain sight in the HTML - but a lot of people have a hard time understanding this.
Actual "security through obscurity" is things like the US policy of never revealing where its nukes are located, or how may are located at any particular site where the very nature of the facility guarantees that some nukes will be present. (E.g., an ICBM base.)
In your example, "security through obscurity" would be a semi leaving the facility ever 10 to 15 minutes with a big "US Nukes!" label on the side. But fewer than 1% of the trucks actually have nukes on board....
Re:Weapon caches (Score:2)
Re:Weapon caches (Score:1)
Who is the right person to have a suitcase sized Nuke?
Just wondering.....
Re:Weapon caches (Score:1)
In the real world, where suitcase sized nukes apparently exist, the right person to own one is someone that doesn't bear a grudge against me.
Re:Weapon caches (Score:1)
Re:Weapon caches (Score:1)
That's Not Funny (Score:3, Insightful)
For that comment alone I think you should be the first to go when VA cuts more jobs.
Implications? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, we all know about the Radioactive Boy Scout [dangerousl...tories.org] who had built by the age of 15 a system capable to radiating a town using home-made parts. Now we find caches of radioactive waste popping up or being dumped in the most unlikely of places, and I'm sure that the reports that make it to the news wires are only a fraction of what is really out there.
If a determined group decided that they really wanted to kill a city, they could do it easily and probably in complete secrecy. Just think about the logistics for a second, and you'll be quite shocked. Really it only requires one thing: commitment. Do a few google and Usenet searches for things like home-built x-ray machines, rail-guns, even the correct way to mine Uranium from pitchblende and you'll find pages and pages of information. Even a full-blown nuclear weapon is not impossible to create with the right funding and determination. It is truly a testament to either human nature or really smart detective work on the part of the CIA and friends that we don't already have suitcase nukes taking out our Super Bowl parties every year.
A "dirty bomb" need not even be nuclear, per se. A truck full of chlorine gas bursting open at the top of Nob Hill in the middle of any one of the countless San Francisco conventions would cause horrific deaths by the thousands, and would not be very easy to clean up before sickening tens of thousands. There are an infinite number of very deadly chemicals that could be sprayed randomly around a city (attached to unsuspecting taxi bumpers as they drive randomly about the city, for example) that may not kill millions of people, but would certainly cause a lot of sickness and seriously scare the population.
In Japan a few years ago, soda cans were being poisoned in a strange spree of nonsensical killings. How often to you check and see that "safety" cap on your Jolt was fully attached before opening it? How hard is it to remove those caps without damaging the "safety seal" when you think about it? Not that hard really. It only takes 2-3 deaths and an anonymous email from posioncokeguy@hotmail.com to the news media to start a pandemonium.
Of course, this particular event took place in Georgia the country and not Georgia the state, but that doesn't mean that we should just laugh it off as something those kooky old communists did. I'm sure we have radioactive and chemical poison floating around all over the place, but do we know where that all is? Especially considering all the illegal dumping that corporations have been doing over the years...
I have spent some time watching a lot of those "true crime" shows over the last few months, and one aspect that seems to be constantly ignored is that most of the crimes are not solved though "investigation" but through dumb luck. Often the key to solving the case comes from a criminal calling home or accidentally bumping into the wrong person in a city a thousand miles away. Just look at how the anthrax investigation has petered out. They have basically stopped looking and now are just waiting for the bad guys to slip up and tell their story to a stranger in Pensacola in a drunken lapse in judgment. A really well honed group could easily pull off a incredible terrorist attack even today. With the right amount of encryption and non-localization, and a healthy dose of disinformation, a group could easily pull off a stunt that dwarfs 9/11 with ease. But the we seem to be complacent with the belief that the materials to create mass destruction are safely locked away. Stories like the above tell us that this belief is flawed, and we should really start to question just how safe we really are...
Re:Implications? (Score:1)
Re:Implications? (Score:1)
Make more neutrons?
Re:Implications? (Score:1)
Re:Implications? (Score:1)
A kilogram of plutonium (huge amount by transuranic standards) could irradiate a small area. If you took a largish TNT bomb, you could spread the plutonium around a several-block wide area. According to Dr. Bill Watenberg, a prominint nuclear scientist with 2 PHD's, the people in this area would get about as much radiation as they would get from a chest X-ray. The real danger would be from the bomb blast and the resulting panic.
Plutonium is actualy heavier than lead, so plutonium particulates settle to the ground fast. And you don't have to worry about drinking contaminated water. You can orally take a couple of grams of plutonium with no ill effect. A 747 ramming into a reactor building probably wouldn't break through, so you don't need to really worry about terrorists ramming nuclear reactors.
Nuclear power has a suberb safety record, (chernobly killed i think 32) with no deaths in the US. Coal power kills around ~50,000 people a year. Read this report [ornl.gov] by Oak Ridge National Laboratory on coal radioactivity compared to nuclear power radioactivty. Coal plants are dumping more radioactivity (and other crap) into our atmosphere than we'd get if we just spread our nuke waste on the ground somewhere. And you can thank the non-logical retards at the Sierra Club and Greenpeace for our continued dependance on coal. Solar and wind are expensive and unreliable. Nuclear power, and ultimately fusion, is the answer to our energy problems.
Also, visit this site. [pushback.com] Sorry, I just had to blow off some steam there.
Re:Implications? (Score:1)
Even though that is quite a few, it in no way compares to coal power deaths.
Re:Implications? (Score:1)
You make an interesting point with which I agree. There are undoubtedly countless possible techniques for spreading fear. One of my personal favorite examples is poisoning public food and water supplies for a few medium sized cities. How hard would it be to contaminate the water supply of Anytown, USA and kill 50 000? We're only three meals away from revolution anyway, and I think most people would simply crack if they did not know from where they could find their next meal.
You're right; if a small group of people were truly committed, it would not be too difficult.
But what is the point of worrying? There is significant risk all around us (e.g., getting in or near an automobile), and there is nothing one can do about it and live a normal, sane life. We have nothing to fear but fear itself, truly.
Re:Implications? (Score:2)
Um... okay... People might be a little scared, but only the stupid ones. I don't know anyone here in the US that is seriously panicking 24/7 because of the 1/1m chance they will be killed by a terrorist. Other countries (Isreal, Palistine) put up with far worse. The only people considering revolution are the Texas gun-totin' militia hate groups.
Re:Implications? (Score:1)
Being three meals away from revolution is nothing new and nothing specific to 9/11. Yeah, so the saying is clever but the actual number of meals is probably a little greater than three. The point, however, is that if a group of terrorists attempted to capitalize on this general notion, then there could be a profound effect amongst regular citizens.
The two most basic human needs are food/drink and security. You take away both of those and people will not be idle. They will take it upon themselves to fill those needs whichever ways possible.
Scrapped Irradiation Equipment? (Score:3, Informative)
The nuclear material is usually well protected in metal cylinders, which are also quite nice for use as scrap. In one documented case [bergen.com], the scrap ended up in table legs.
It was only discovered after a truck that had contained the tables passed through a detector at a control point after making an unrelated delivery as Los Alamos. There have been similar documented incidents of contamination in Brazil, Thailand and Turkey as well as others.
I'm not bothering to post all the links. There are too many.
Thermoelectric Generator (Score:3, Informative)
It is nasty stuff, being chemically similar to calcium. It is therefore absorbed by the body and used in bones.
So - Strontium Dog was "real" ? (Score:1)
dragged them??? (Score:1)
Stronium Facts (Score:1)
With a half life of 28 years, this is something we will have to deal with for quite some time. And.. it mostly relates back to the cold war.
So, for those Slashdotters who claim that we don't have to deal with this in the USA. I strongly recommend you take a look at this web page and read it in detail:
The Tooth Fairy Project [prop1.org]
-Lots of great information about radioactive elements used by the United States government during the cold war, and what's happening to those unused weapons at this time. Also very informative of how these weapons/elements affect our daily lives. I read this a long time ago, and have had it saved since then. I owe most of my knowledge of radioactive elements and weaponry to this article. I suggest you read it.
This is a fact of life for everyone, especially Russia and the USA. We don't find it in containers capable of melting ice (even through lead casing), but we do find it in our children's teeth, breast milk, and bioaccumulating in our vegetation. I can avoid an ice-melting container in the woods. I can't change what's in my teeth.