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Discarded Strontium-90 Found in ex-USSR 59

Posted by michael from the bedwarmer dept.
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?
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Discarded Strontium-90 Found in ex-USSR More

Discarded Strontium-90 Found in ex-USSR

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  • I, for one, am glad that those two have taken such good measures to see themselves removed from the gene pool. My advice should that fail, however, is somewhat reminiscent of Denis Leary: ".. and make sure you get your whole head behind the shotgun. Thank you."

    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..

    • Okay, so the two guys that found this crap got severe radiation burns. These cylinders ahve enough intense radioactivity to burn them, and you wanna try putting it into your PC. (And no, it wasnt a funny suggestion.)

      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.
      • Apply a bit of logic to the thought. Obviously there would be some small ammount of shielding both before and after it's inserted.

        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*

        • No, it wasnt funny. Not after you jsut took the piss outta the Georgians for being dumbasses. (Which was atleast amusing.)

          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.
          • Ok, first let me say that this isn't a personal attack on you..
            Do you knitpick television programs as well? My post was for amusement purposes only. In other words, "it was not a serious suggestion".
  • If it were dilluted to the volume of lake superior, it wouldn't be harmful anymore.
    • It depends on wether the element is chemically toxic as well as radioactive.

      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)

        by Tuxinatorium ( 463682 )
        The thyroid stockpiles iodide ions, not assorted metals. The EDTA from drinking 1 or 2 sodas a day with your fish would be sufficient antidote to the heavy metal poisoning. :p
      • You're right! You could easily take the radioactivity from ingesting several grams of plutonium. However, you could not take the heavy metal poisoning. Oddly enough, radioactivity is not the worst danger.

  • What is the thought proccess? (Score:4, Troll)

    by gnovos ( 447128 ) <gnovos@ c h i p p e d . net> on Saturday February 02, 2002 @02:07AM (#2941092) Homepage Journal
    How does this happen? You are out in the woods and find a strange glowing object that is magially melting ice. How do you ever contemplate taking this thing home?

    I am beginning to wonder if the "red" in Russia wasn't referring to the communists but to ther rednecks...

    :)
    • These people were probably poor. They were in the forest gathering wood and they found something that would keep them warm. They weren't stupid, it's just that they didn't know what it was. If you're living in an underdeveloped part of the world, you take your warmth during winter where you can find it.
    • There have a number of well publicized cases where cobalt-60 radiation sources ended up in third world garbage dumps, injuring people who didn't know that the material was radioactive.

      Steel mills that use scrap metal now have radiation detectors to prevent the accidental inclusion of radioactive scrap in their steel.

    • I doesn't glow. I don't know where that myth came from. The stronium does not glow green or anything. It just looks like any kind of metal. No radioactive thing glows green. However, radium-phosphorus paint was made to make watches glow.
      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.
      • Water re-emits light in the blue wavelengths when in an intense radiation field (beta or gamma radiation that is). Thus all those pretty pool reactor pictures of the glowing blue box under 50 feet of water. That is probably where the myth came from.

        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)

    by Marsh Jedi ( 244205 )
    I seem to remember something about the U.S. Army being given a portable nuclear generator at one point--I mean, it sounds like a great deal....wheel one out into a theater and you have a portable power supply. Just add a water-driven cooling system and a radiator.

    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?
    • The Army had a 3MW portable (several semi-trailers and some intense assembly time) power plant in the late 50's. It was intended for remote bases such as airfields, hospitals etc in very remote wilderness. It worked just fine for 4 years of testing. It was never deployed because a portable and effective containmant wasn't practical, and the core was so small there were severe nuclear reactivity control issues.

      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)

    by oregon ( 554165 )
    Aren't there allegedly [bogritz.com] hidden caches of suitcase sized nuclear weapons all over the place. They're the scary ones that you don't want being found by the wrong people.
    • The caches probably do still exist but do not contain nukes. The Soviet system was extremely centralised and I can't see them risking the nukes being found by someone else.
    • Just out of idle Curiosity

      Who is the right person to have a suitcase sized Nuke?

      Just wondering.....
    • there were i believe 34 suit case nukes, 28 of them were destroyed, the remaing 6 are unaccounted for. Which could mean a lot of things, they were destroyed but the paperwork was missing. it definately is scary though that some are missing

  • That's Not Funny (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TRoLLaXoR ( 181585 ) <trollaxor@trollaxor.com> on Saturday February 02, 2002 @03:41AM (#2941219) Homepage
    For some people that's a fucking daily reality, Michael. We have it good in the US but for some, it's a fact of life they have to deal with.

    For that comment alone I think you should be the first to go when VA cuts more jobs.

  • Implications? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gnovos ( 447128 ) <gnovos@ c h i p p e d . net> on Saturday February 02, 2002 @04:12AM (#2941261) Homepage Journal
    The more I think about it, the more I realize that a real "dirty bomb" is actually fantastically easy to make.

    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...
    • At http://www.fusor.net they have a forum on building your own fusion device. Not very useful for much, but it will generate neutrons. Hmmm..what could you do with a device that generates lots of neutrons...
    • People need to calm down about those "dirty bombs."

      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.

    • 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.

      • We're only three meals away from revolution

        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.

        • 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)

    by hughk ( 248126 ) on Saturday February 02, 2002 @11:49AM (#2941872) Journal
    Nuclear materials are used every day for medical purposes and for metallurgical inspection. These are not microsources as used in smoke-detectors. These are serious.

    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)

    by Slashamatic ( 553801 ) on Saturday February 02, 2002 @12:14PM (#2941969)
    Strontium 90 is used in Radio-Isotope Thermoelectric generators (I guess that it why the snow was melted). The is an FAQ about the disposal of SR-90 RTGs in the US here [lanl.gov]. It is a government site and given current paranoia, I don't know how long it will stay up.

    It is nasty stuff, being chemically similar to calcium. It is therefore absorbed by the body and used in bones.

  • I always wondered where the cool name was from.
  • "the men dragged them back to their camp" ... "the cylinders, which measure about 10cm by 15cm" They must be very dense (the cylinders that is ... but then again!).
  • The daily reality is that Stronium is located in just about every plant, due to weapons testing in the 40's and 50's. Every baby born has a fraction of stronium in their teeth due to it's ability to mimic calcium. This is considered to be an effect of women's increased risk to carry stronium in breast milk. Our bodies can not tell the difference, and our body uses this man-made radioactive element as it would calcium. It is also suspected that stronium-90 is a major factor in the current rise in breast cancer.

    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.

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