I laughed when they said they were looking for it…

Those fools are out there, intent on walking a 900-mile road searching for something smaller than a penny in the dirt. Well, I'll be damned…

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-64481317

 

surely, a geiger counter will come in handy for that. in terms of "looking"

idiots nonetheless


edit; clicked the link afterwards and it says they found it

 

Oh, I saw them out there with the Geiger counters when I was laughing. That was still 870 miles of road on foot.

Dude during the public briefing told people not to get within 5 m of it if they saw it. As if the public without the Geiger counters could spot that thing before they stepped on it.

 

SMFH

 

@crashman isn't this your line of work in the oilfield industry? Or do I have you mixed up with someone else?

Just how fired is their radioactive materials guy?

 

I figured if it really did "fall of the back of a truck".... then some reasonable sensitive radiation detectors should be able to find it. And they did.

Buncha Wally's for loosing it in the first place.

 

Regarding loosing high value or dangerous items....This is Sicily drop zone on Ft Bragg. I've spent several days & nights of my life walking around with a metal detector tryign to find a rifle someone lost on a jump. The theory being if it came loose and fell and they didnt find it after a couple thousand man hours of looking then maybe its buried. So we go out for a day or so and try to find it. We usually didnt find $hit. Because M16A2's/M240's/M60's/M249's werent radioactive....

Its amazing that every now and then they would find it. Which shows anything is possible if you get 200-500+ guys walking around in a line and looking.

 

Been there...done that!

 

Never was in a battalion that had to play weapon search but I have been around where other battalions were having fun. Reforger was always the best. Nothing like an Armor battalion or mech battalion that loses a weapon and then somebody runs over it with a tank or other track and grinds it in the mud. A fun time was had by all.

 

There is still a nuke off the coast of Savannah somewhere hiding in the drink, unless a Bond villain found it and is waiting for the right time.

 

I don't know the purity of the sample, but an exhaustive 30 second google session brought up numbers that determine that a 6mm x 8mm cylinder of absolutely pure Cs137 would generate 800billion beta decays per second at just over 0.5 MeV, each of which will penetrate ~6 feet of air before being blocked. There would also be ~640 million decays resulting in gamma rays at .661 MeV, which I didn't find air penetration distances on, but it will penetrate a half inch of steel.

So, yeah. glowing.

 

So what you're saying is, this thing could turn a person into the Hulk?

 

Its the Gamma that's the concern. The Beta from the Cesium isnt that bad.

More like the green lantern with hair loss and leukemia.

 

That's not even close to what I expected. Was Stan Lee messing with me? Was my whole childhood a lie?

 

No. The science changed since then.

 

Not for me! I'm one of "the other 5%". At my age, I sleep with gammas.