The International Isotopes team sawed into the holder for the source, which otherwise would not have fit into the transport vessel, but then cut into the source itself. That released about 2,900 curies of the material, contaminating 13 people and all seven floors of the facility, according to DOE’s March 30 report on the accident.
One of my favorite nuclear incidents (although uncritical): in 2014, it was discovered that workers in the Swiss nuclear plant Leibstadt drilled several holes [0] into the primary containment to install a fire extinguisher [1].
It's things like that, and the watch standers and damage control officers of the Bonhomme Richard, that make you blink about rarely-used safety organizations.
If you're not auditing your rare-action groups adherence to standards via indepdent, out-of-chain assessment, assume they're hopelessly broken.
This is absolutely key to systems / network administration, I'm increasingly convinced, which are both fundamentally risk management practices (which is why Dev hates both so much).
Failure to drill and audit is professional incompetence at this stage.
I remember years back in the early days of the Internet reading about two Russian sailors that vapourised themselves attempting to dismantle the trigger of a nuke for precious metals. It was amusing in a dark way but I think it was probably untrue.
December 2, 2001 – Lia radiological accident: In the village of Lia, Georgia three lumberjacks discovered two 90Sr cores from Soviet radioisotope thermoelectric generators. These were of the Beta-M type, built in the 80s, with an activity of 1295 TBq each. The lumberjacks were scavenging the forest for firewood, when they came across two metal cylinders melting snow within a one meter radius laying in the road. They picked up these objects to use as personal heaters, sleeping with their backs to them. All lumberjacks sought medical attention individually, and were treated for radiation injuries. One patient, DN-1, was seriously injured and required multiple skin grafts. After 893 days in the hospital, he was declared dead after sepsis caused by complications and infections of a radiation ulcer on the subject's back. [48] The disposal team consisted of 24 men who were restricted to a maximum of 40 seconds worth of exposure (max. 20mSv) each while transferring the canisters to lead-lined drums.
October 21, 1994 – a large caesium-137 source was stolen by scrap metal scavengers in Tammiku, Männiku, Saku Parish, Estonia. The man who carried the source home received a 4,000 rad whole-body dose and died 12 days after first taking it. In addition, the man's stepson sustained radiation burn injuries to his hands after he found and touched the source after the man had placed it inside a kitchen drawer
and the following stories are new to me and very disturbing. radiation is a long lasting invisible fire. not too scary except that we can't see it without tools.
January 23, 2008 – A licensed radiology technologist, Raven Knickerbocker, at Mad River Community Hospital in Arcata, California performed 151 CT scan slices on a single 3 mm level on the head of a 23-month-old child over a 65-minute period. The child suffered radiation burns (skin erythema) to a small strip of his face and head. In one report, an independent investigation of the child's blood was said to have found "substantial chromosomal damage"[65] but subsequent reports reported no lasting harm.[66] The technologist was fired, and her license was permanently revoked on March 16, 2011 by the state of California, citing "gross negligence".[65] The hospital's radiology manager, Bruce Fleck, testified that Knickerbocker's conduct was "a rogue act of insanity".
October 2011 – At a hospital in Rio de Janeiro, a 7-year-old girl was treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia with whole brain radiation. The prescriptions were done manually in a form with no formal peer review process. Because of an error in the registration of the number of sessions, she received the full dose in each session of radiotherapy. Even with early toxicity, the doctor refused to assess the patient, because some of the complaints were usual. The full treatment was finished in about 8 sessions and the girl was admitted with radiation burns. She developed frontal lobe necrosis and died in June 2012. After an investigation, the physicist, technician, and physician were charged with manslaughter.[79]
"In the operating year 2014 were in the nuclear power plant
Leibstadt (KKL) next to a reactor snap shutter
several power transients on July 5, 2014
to be recorded. The integrity of the primary container
ment was through in the first half of the year
six holes impaired. ENSI provides
confirms that the KKL meets the approved operating conditions
always adhered to."
There is this:
"In 2008, two fire extinguishers were installed at the Leibstadt Nuclear Power Station. In so doing, six holes were pierced in the primary containment of the reactor, in order to insert screws. Five of the six holes were full of screws, whereas the sixth was only covered by a bracket. The confinement barrier that notably isolates the reactor vessel and the core of the reactor is a basic element for security, because it is an obstacle to the emission of radioactive elements into the environment. The holes were discovered accidentally by an employee who was doing rounds."(https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/the-norther... quoting a Greenpeace blogger)
Edit: Ok, this is hilarious:
"November 6, 2014 The Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate (ENSI) has filed criminal charges against Greenpeace activists that were involved in a protest at the Beznau nuclear power plant in March this year. The activists are charged with causing damage to property. The charges were filed on Monday with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. According to the ENSI, the protestors jumped over the fence surrounding the reactor and cut some wires. They then climbed the reactor building and drilled holes into the secondary containment wall. The charges also cover another incident in 2008 at the Leibstadt nuclear plant, also in Aargau, where holes were allegedly drilled by activists to install two fire extinguishers. The damage was only discovered in June this year."
In 2008, activists snuck in, installed two fire extinguishers, and snuck out without anyone noticing.
I've broken into plenty of off limits post-industrial wasteland sites in my life, but in my will to exist and survive, wasn't stupid enough to pry open any radioactive sources. The worst that happened was a friend who had an obsession with watching the green flash when smashing flourescent lights. I told him it was bad for him to be breathing that shit.
No, I don't think I'm out of line speaking for people from third world countries here, those people were thieving idiots who wanted money more than they cared about survival or the health and safety of their family.
Somehow, most people exist and survive without thieving. But NeoTrots love to act as if theft, even incredibly dumb and self-harmful theft, is some necessary and noble act.
What logic is this?
If I say most people exist and survive without snorting a kilo of cocaine a week, does that necessarily mean that some people will die if they don't get a kilo of cocaine?
I have a lot more sympathy for people trying to scrape together money to feed their family than for people who smash things and cause environmental contamination for the lulz.
Nobody is excusing the theft. The point is it should not be possible to steal radioactive material like it was nothing. Something is very wrong if common thieves can cause radioactive contamination of a large area.
Could you please not do this sort of fulmination and name-calling on HN? It's against the site guidelines because we're trying for something different than internet default here. For that, we need everyone to make an effort—trying to go against entropy takes energy.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, and especially not ideological flamewar, not matter how misguided another comment is or you feel it is. Perhaps you don't owe "Teds" better but you owe this community quite a bit better if you're participating in it. We're trying to avoid the bottom of the internet barrel here, so each user is responsible for not posting comments that point that way.
You are conveniently ignoring the biggest natural disasters created by the State: famines, wars, weapons testing, unspeakable pollution and so forth...
Individual greed is often limited by the fact that we are all humans in the end. Business greed is limited by competition and the fact that they have to still participate in the society. But politician's reckless behavior is often unhinged and unchecked.
> Individual greed is often limited by the fact that we are all humans.
No, its not, and its obviously not if “business" and “State” greed are not, because those things don't actually exist as separate things, they are just names for special cases of combinations of individual behavior.
I would argue that the State is an unbeatable amplifier of any human flaws its leaders may have.
It's due both to the fact that there is nothing above to supervise (the State is an ultimate authority, with nothing, not even other state, above) and that pretty much every controversial decision is taken in the name and for the good of - The People - an abstract concept even more divorced from reality.
The problem is that, without a formal state, you just end up with an informal state that is pretty much always worse than the formal one.
There are limited counterexamples in specific situations, but I don't believe that we have yet figured out a viable alternative to "the state" for organizing human societies at large scale.
No doubt, but please don't post generic comments like this to HN [1]. They lead to shallow, predictable, and usually nasty discussions. We're trying to avoid that sort of thing here. It was quite predictable that this post led to a low-quality thread and ultimately a nasty flamewar.
Generic comments usually come from reflexive reactions [2], which tend to be quick and shallow. What we want on HN are curious conversations, which are a different species altogether.
This might sound callous, but literally everyone in the chain of theft here deserved what was coming to them except for the six year old girl. If you receive a stolen item that glows and you think has supernatural powers, please eat it yourself instead of THROWING IT ON THE FLOOR FOR YOUR SIX YEAR OLD DAUGHTER TO PLAY WITH.
Why were people from IGR found to be at fault at all? From Wikipedia, it sounds so backwards... like, one of the owners seems to have done everything possible to recoup the radioactive material & warn of the dangers. There's not a word about anything happening to those who prevented the recuperation of radioactive material, only to later fail to guard it. And thieves are only mentioned to say they were not included as defendants.
IGR shouldn't have left the source behind in the first place, but yes beyond that mistake they seem to have done everything they could to get the source secured. They were only penalised for a peripheral issue, the dilapidated state of the building. Presumably the theory is they should not have left the source in a building in that condition, which contributed to the thieves being able to take it.
"Meanwhile, the ownership of the clinic's assets was being discussed in court, and the cobalt 60 teletherapy unit was moved to the new facilities and the cesium 137 teletherapy unit was abandoned in its original place due to being seized."
Sounds like the root cause was stupid bureaucrats, but that must of course not be admitted in public.
Right, but that equipment should have been moved to the new facility before the old site was handed over to it’s new owners. If they’d done that the equipment couldn’t have been seized.
In the linked article, IGR and a lawyer both claim that only CNEM could authorise the move.
And the "handover" to the new owners was very acrimonious, with the new and old owners fighting in court. What seems clear is that IGR lost access to the location and filed several complaints about the machine being left there.
If IGR was securing the machine and trying to get it moved before they were thrown out of the location and prevented from visiting it as they claim, I don't think they're to blame at all. Of course details are fuzzy on that.
---
EDIT: According to this court sentence [1], IGR never notified CNEM:
> Then, under pressure to leave the site, the IGR transferred its headquarters to another address, and ended up abandoning the obsolete Cesium-137 pump in the old building, without even notifying the CNEN or the State Health Secretariat of the fact.
> On 05/04/87, the demolition of the building began, by order of the former partner of IGR, AMAURILLO MONTEIRO DE OLIVEIRA, culminating with the almost total destruction of the original building, which left it without a roof, doors or windows, despite the existence of the aforementioned Cesium-137 pump on the site, without any warnings or notices.
---
EDIT2: According again to the court sentence, the demolition was ordered by former partner of IGR, who had to pay 100k for the whole ordeal.
> On 05/04/87, the demolition of the building began, by order of the former partner of IGR, AMAURILLO MONTEIRO DE OLIVEIRA, culminating with the almost total destruction of the original building, which left it without a roof, doors or windows, despite the existence of the aforementioned Cesium-137 bomb on the site, without any warnings or notices.
Not at the behest of The People? What a weird court.
But more importantly, "to seize" means to "take possession", doesn't it? And you need a license to possess a teletherapy machine, for the very good reason that the damn thing is dangerous. IGR had a license. The bureaucrats didn't. Neither did the new site owner, landlord, whatever you want to call them. They still took possession, by force.
Property rights are a set of rules. Nuclear safety regulations are a set of rules. These are not the same kind of rules, though. Not understanding the difference kills people. The court didn't understand the difference.
Probably because the people who stopped them from retrieving the material were better connected politically... I agree that there's something very fishy in the story
"When IGR moved to its new premises in 1985, it left behind a caesium-137-based teletherapy unit that had been purchased in 1977."
It belonged to them so it was first and foremost their responsibility to take care of it and not to leave it behind.
The Wikipedia page is too succinct to know what were the reasons for the courts to prevent removal later on but it does say that it was the court that took the decision to finally post a guard on site (albeit obviously a poor one), not the owners.
From Wikipedia it feels like maybe the court placed a guard on site to *prevent* IGR from collecting anything from the premises (there was an ongoing dispute on the property)
> The fate of the abandoned site was disputed in court between IGR and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, then owner of the premises
My understanding is that this is how the court got involved, not because of any radioactive materials; IGR owner tried to make the court aware & let him retrieve the radioactive materials but had no luck.
It is admittedly unclear if the guard was posted to protect the radioactive materials or just the building in general. However, do note that guard is also not one of the named defendants (if it was his responsibility specifically to protect the capsule, I argue that he failed big time and should've been prosecuted for it; if he was just told "guard the building", it's a different issue in my mind).
Again, there isn't enough details to go beyond speculation.
The only thing that seems clear-ish is that IGR considered that the device belonged to them according to their actions as described. If so it is very reasonable that they be held to account.
This does not mean that there aren't other responsibilities or that officials/the government tried to cover their asses later on. The Wikipedia article does mention, though that the National Nuclear Energy Commission ended up being ordered to pay compensation to the victims, which at face value sounds like an acknowledgement that they also bore some responsibility.
It also says that the thieves were not involved in the civil suit without mention of anything else. This may be an important point because the goal of a civil suit is to get money so there may be little point in suing poor people... They are obviously guilty of theft (criminal), and damage to property (criminal and civil), beyond that it's quite unclear and they did pay a heavy price.
> Four months before the theft, on May 4, 1987, Saura Taniguti, then director of Ipasgo, the institute of insurance for civil servants, used police force to prevent one of the owners of IGR, Carlos Figueiredo Bezerril, from removing the radioactive material that had been left behind.[7] Figueiredo then warned the president of Ipasgo, Lício Teixeira Borges, that he should take responsibility "for what would happen with the caesium bomb".[7] The Court of Goiás posted a security guard to protect the site.[8] Meanwhile, the owners of IGR wrote several letters to the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN), warning them about the danger of keeping a teletherapy unit at an abandoned site, but they could not remove the equipment by themselves once a court order prevented them from doing so.
It sounds pretty cut-and-dry. They were physically prevented from removing the equipment and they alerted the authorities to let then know how dangerous it was.
It's not cut and dry at all because, according to Wikipedia, at that point the equipment had already been left abandoned there for 2 years without any mention of any measure to secure it.
Again, it's hard to second guess based on a few lines on Wikipedia because there is no details but the main point remains that it does not sound strange at all that those who claim to be the owners be held to account (among others).
According to the linked sources in Portuguese, CNEN (the government nuclear energy authority) knew about the Cesium machine from the moment the address of IGR (the owners of the machine) changed.
IGN and a lawyer expert in the matter claimed that the authorisation for moving the machine could only come from CNEN.
If anything, that's gross negligence from CNEN. IGR seemed very exasperated during the whole process, if they were really fighting court orders that prevented them from having access to the place (and the machine).
--
EDIT: However, according to this court sentence [2], it seems that IGR never told anything to CNEM:
> Then, under pressure to leave the site, the IGR transferred its headquarters to another address, and ended up abandoning the obsolete Cesium-137 bomb in the old building, without even notifying the CNEN or the State Health Secretariat of the fact.
> On 05/04/87, the demolition of the building began, by order of the former partner of IGR, AMAURILLO MONTEIRO DE OLIVEIRA, culminating with the almost total destruction of the original building, which left it without a roof, doors or windows, despite the existence of the aforementioned Cesium-137 bomb on the site, without any warnings or notices.
Sure and, as already mentioned, the Wikipedia article does mention that the CNEN ended up being liable for compensation.
But sending a letter, even letters, to the CNEN does not absolve the owner's responsibility. It just shows that several organisations seem not to have done what they should have.
The claim by IGR, however, was that the removal was impossible without authorisation from CNEN, and that they legally lost access to the location and the machine.
If this was indeed true and they acted on it, then it would absolve them. However a judge disagreed, so they also had to pay 100k.
---
EDIT: On the second page of the document above, the judge mentions that owners of IGR were free from paying. Only the nuclear physicist (Flamarion) and a former partner who ordered the demolition (Amaurillo) had to pony up the 100k.
> Four months before the theft, on May 4, 1987, Saura Taniguti, then director of Ipasgo, the institute of insurance for civil servants, used police force to prevent one of the owners of IGR, Carlos Figueiredo Bezerril, from removing the radioactive material that had been left behind.
This is the key line for me. Why did Saura Taniguti summon police force to prevent the removal of such a hazardous object?
The link above is helpful but you have to dig through a very long Portuguese website to find this key nugget (via Google translate):
> However, at the end of 1985, this institute stopped working in these facilities and moved to other new facilities. Meanwhile, the property of the clinic's services was disputed in court, and the cobalt 60 teletherapy unit was transferred to the new facilities and the teletherapy unit in Cesio 137 was abandoned in its original place because it was embargoed.
> Most part of the clinic was demolished as well as adjacent properties. The treatment rooms in the fueron were demolished but were in a ruined state, abandoned. The date has not been notified to the licensing authority - Comisión Nacional de Energía Nuclear: CNEN.
> According to [Saura Taniguti], because there was a dispute between IGR and Saint Vincent de Paul Association - which owned the real estate block - where the IGR Hospital was located, and the court had a sealed order and cut it [sic]. security guards should all equipment in the hospital must remain the status quo.
My guess is the events were probably something a bit like the following:
1. IGR decides to relocate.
2. The technicians in IGR seemed very aware of how dangerous the Cesium source was. It was likely installed in a large machine, that would be inaccessible until most of the other items in the facility had been relocated.
3. Furthermore, to move such a source, they would not just pick it up and carry it in their pocket - you'd book perhaps an armored/lead-lined car, carry Gieger counters, dose badges, and wear contamination suits in case of an incident. Speculation: IGR thought it would be prudent to have most of the facility moved by untrained movers, but leave the nuclear source in place to reduce risk of an incident. Once the facility was emptied, they could bring in the the hazmat suits and move the source more safely.
4. All articles agree that the landlord, SVPA, is unhappy. Speculation: IGR had to terminate its lease early, or SVPA couldn't find a new tenant to cover their losses on the space.
5. After the initial move of the "easy" items, SVPA learns some "important equipment" is still on premises. They move to seal the building, to gain leverage in court negotiations.
6. The court negotiations go on for two years. Meanwhile, the developer moves to demolish the property so that it may be redeveloped so they can monetize the land. Speculation: offers were made to move the radiation source, but this would only be allowed if IGR would, for example, agree to pay for the cost of the broken lease and lost rent. (This is almost the exact situation of the SFO Safer, the oil storage unit off the coast of Yemen; people want to make it safe, and have been try to for years; but the group controlling access to the vessel is unwilling to grant free access to it, because the vessel in its current state is too valuable for negotiations).
7. The IGR was prevented "by police" from moving the source on May 4 1987. While the source could have been carried out by one person, nobody who knew how dangerous it was would just casually carry it out. Speculation IGR made a last-ditch to recover the source, and a task force arrived with e.g. Geiger counters, hazmat suits and a containment vessel. This did not go unnoticed -- authorities were notified; police c...
> 6. [...] Meanwhile, the developer moves to demolish the property so that it may be redeveloped so they can monetize the land
According to court documents from 2000, the order to demolish the property came from one of the IGR [former] partners, Amaurillo Monteiro de Oliveira.
However this part of the court sentence doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If this were true then they wouldn't get away with only paying 100k... I'm trying to find other court documents, or maybe an appeal.
> On 05/04/87, the demolition of the building began, by order of the former partner of IGR, AMAURILLO MONTEIRO DE OLIVEIRA, culminating with the almost total destruction of the original building, which left it without a roof, doors or windows, despite the existence of the aforementioned Cesium-137 bomb on the site, without any warnings or notices.
EDIT: On the second page, it is mentioned that only two of the former IGR partners had to pay up: Amaurillo, probably for the reason above, and the nuclear physicist Flamarion Barbosa Goulart.
EDIT 2: Ok, so it looks like he was indeed a former partner in IGR. Why he ended up ordering the demolishment, is beyond me. It seems the other IGR partners didn't have to pay anything.
It was basically the result of the action from Church bureaucrats along with the public workers pension bureaucrat helped by the notorious arrogance of brazilian judges that usually ignore expert advice when it contradicts their opinions.
When shit goes horribly wrong due to a system failure you’ll often find someone gets blamed and it’s usually the least politically influential and/or those with the deepest pockets.
According to page 2 of the 2000 court sentence [1], it seems that IGR were absolved:
> B) I exclude the FEDERAL UNION, CARLOS DE FIGUEIREDO BEZERRIL and CRISEIDE CASTRO DOURADO, ORLANDO ALVES TEIXEIRA from the procedural relationship due to passive illegitimacy (art. 3º, c/c art. 267, VI, of the CPC);
However it seems it's not clear if it was a clerical error or something more complex than that.
> On September 16, Alves succeeded in puncturing the capsule's aperture window with a screwdriver, allowing him to see a deep blue light coming from the tiny opening he had created. He inserted the screwdriver and successfully scooped out some of the glowing substance. Thinking it was perhaps a type of gunpowder, he tried to light it, but the powder would not ignite. [...] On September 18, Alves sold the items to a nearby scrapyard. That night, Devair Alves Ferreira, the owner of the scrapyard, noticed the blue glow from the punctured capsule. Thinking the capsule's contents were valuable or even supernatural, he immediately brought it into his house. Over the next three days, he invited friends and family to view the strange glowing substance. On September 21, at the scrapyard, one of Ferreira's friends succeeded in freeing several rice-sized grains of the glowing material from the capsule using a screwdriver. Ferreira began to share some of them with various friends and family members.
> The day before the sale to the third scrapyard, on September 24, Ivo, Devair's brother, successfully scraped some additional dust out of the source and took it to his house a short distance away. There he spread some of it on the concrete floor. His six-year-old daughter, Leide das Neves Ferreira, later ate an egg while sitting on this floor. She was also fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, applying it to her body and showing it off to her mother. Dust from the powder fell on the egg she was consuming; she eventually absorbed 1.0 GBq and received a total dose of 6.0 Gy, more than a fatal dose even with treatment. [...] She was buried in a common cemetery in Goiânia, in a special fiberglass coffin lined with lead to prevent the spread of radiation. Despite these measures, news of her impending burial caused a riot of more than 2,000 people in the cemetery on the day of her burial, all fearing that her corpse would poison the surrounding land.
It is a staggering read for sure. It's heartbreaking to imagine that little girl playing with something she thinks is a toy without knowing it is silently killing her.
It's easy to think the victims were stupid for playing with a weird glowing material but these are likely uneducated people who're just trying to get by. That they were able to run into such a dangerous substance is a tragedy.
I don’t think we have any study about long-term psychological consequences of being irradiated at such doses. It would not be really surprising if there were neurological consequences, on top of the PTSD associated with living through this…
> U.S. Radium Corporation hired approximately 70 women to perform various tasks including handling radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves
> Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them, the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory.
Holy shit! I've seen some bad employers while working in occupational medicine but this is on a whole new level.
As it turns out, when you have highly radioactive stuff in your buildings, you should probably clean that radioactive stuff out when abandoning said building.
I come back to these sorts of incidents when the topic of warning future generations away from nuclear waste comes up - e.g. "This is not a place of honor" etc. We can't even reliably warn people away now, when we know their language and have internationally recognized symbols for radiation.
It seems curiosity always beats warnings about danger. I mean the curses and the sealing and the like of entering Tutankhamun's tomb were ignored as well. And I'm pretty sure that this container would have the nuclear symbol on it.
The best thing to do I think is to make sure nobody can even accidentally find it. Drill a deep hole (miles) where you know it won't end up in the earth's mantle while the material is still dangerous, fill it with nuclear waste, seal it and forget about it. The chances of someone accidentally finding it again thousands of years down the line are minimal.
Warnings only make people more curious. I don't remember any warning sign from >1000 years ago that actually keep people away.
Good luck finding a place that is geologically stable and will stay so, far away from any human population, far away from any water source, far away from valuable earth materials.
> The best thing to do I think is to make sure nobody can even accidentally find it.
That sounds like just the sort of premise for an "eventually it was found" story. How about the exact opposite of this: rather than rely on obscurity/information-hiding, make it widely known that X is where the dangerous stuff is and it is an absolute no-go.
That way, everyone will know that anyone within a Y-radius of X is exactly where they shouldn't be, for widely understood reasons.
Because if the dangerous stuff has value, there will always be someone who wants to get their hands on it. So the only practical way is to make it so difficult to access that the access cost is much greater than the material's value.
Also, why is it so important that people 1000 years from now don't find it? Maybe the first explorers will get sick and die, and that is unfortunate, but if we don't deal with our energy situation now, there wont be people in 1000 years.
This event happened back in the eighties and there have been changes to warning symbols in response to this and similar incidents.
ISO 21482 specifies an extremely scary-looking radiation symbol [1], to be placed inside such equipment (radiography/radiotherapy etc) as a last-ditch warning. The message might well get through even to a barely-literate scrap thief.
IIUC this is just water with sugar and a fluorescent dye, not radioactive material (except the natural amount of radioactive deuterium and potassium, that is not enough to make it glow).
(I think I saw something like this here in Argentina, but I don't remember the name and I can't find it in Google. But this example is very similar to what I remember from the ads.)
The familiar trefoil symbol has been used in all kinds of places, including that soda. The "extremely scary" symbol is the fourth image in the Wikipedia page OP linked to:
> It depicts, on a red background, a black trefoil with waves of radiation streaming from it, along with a black skull and crossbones, and a running figure with an arrow pointing away from the scene. The radiating trefoil suggests the presence of radiation, while the red background and the skull and crossbones warn of danger. The figure running away from the scene is meant to suggest taking action to avoid the labeled material. The new symbol is not intended to be generally visible, but rather to appear on internal components of devices that house radiation sources so that if anybody attempts to disassemble such devices they will see an explicit warning not to proceed any further.
In popular fiction other idiots make up stories where people gain superpowers from radioactive events. I have no confidence future generations won’t think the same.
That was only because radiation was considered novel and marvelous over fifty years ago. Times have changed and now it is considered banal and hazardous.
Yes, the RAD-60 energy drink here in Argentina is packaged in a bottle made to look (superficially) like a radioactives containment vessel, with the radioactivity symbol on it: http://rad-60.com.ar/
Probably there should be some sort of liability for people putting hazard labels on things that aren't hazardous. Ever looked at an MSDS for sodium chloride?
This is far from unique to nuclear materials. In the news today there was an explosion of a tanker truck full of petrol, which killed ~100 people. We cannot reliably warn people away from anything, and yet some industries are safer than others.
Applying this standard we’d have run away from petrol a long, long time ago. IOW, the standards you seem to use are unrealistic, and unevenly applied. This really isn’t against you: this exact line of reasoning is quite common and demonstrates that we are terrible at risk management.
You seem to be arguing against something I never said, specifically a version of my comment with "and therefore we shouldn't use nuclear power" appended.
I'm not certain if the dramatic warnings are the right direction. It is truthful, but maybe "this is a really boring thing" would work better. Until people start associating that with excitement: mask-on, mask-off.
Right but you will never be able to deter everyone. In fact attempting to do so will encourage some people to seek out and try to get at what you are warning them about.
The source was protected by a shutter, the thieves forced it open. If it was locked in a safe, they would have cut that open.
I remember a quote about a large demonstration that took place in Afghanistan or Iraq after the death of a couple local people.
"Look at these people out here, all upset. Are they here demonstrating because we have are military in their country? No. Are they upset because we accidentally bombed a school or house? No. They are upset because a couple guys walked past 3 signs saying "Danger Keep Out" in 5 languages, climbed over 2 fences and got into the live fire range, found some unexploded ordinance and managed to blow themselves up with it. That is what they are upset about."
I don't quite understand how it's worthwhile to poke a 5cm cylinder to get the scrap metal? Why not just throw it in the pile with everything else? What would a normal hunk of steel be worth?
Yeah. My father and grandfather used to work in junkyards like these. If some strange glowing material showed up in a scrapyard, I have no doubt they'd think it was valuable.
A normal hunk of steel is worth almost nothing. Most recyclers won't even take it (real recyclers, the kind that pay you for your materials, not fraudulent "recyclers" set up for public relations value). Lead, aluminum, brass, copper, silver, and gold go for much higher prices. Copper is common in heavy steel things.
You can find all sorts of valuable things in things that look sciency like this. Like platinum bits and pieces. He was probably hoping to find something else than steel.
Glowing stuff can also be very expensive, but you need to know people who might be interested, and they usually aren’t the best company. Also, proper equipment to manipulate it.
That article talks about an "engine head" of Co-60. That's not a correct translation. The radiotherapy unit has a Co-60 source in it, and it is called a "head", but there is no engine. You just open the doors and shine the source onto a patient for a carefully calculated number of seconds, then shut the doors. It works in an almost identical way to the Cs-137 source from above.
What would be the point of incinerating contaminated material? This isn't a biological threat like bacteria or poison in which case the chemical alteration of the substance through fire negates the threat. Wouldn't the radioactivity remain either in ash or fumes?
I assume that the radioactivity is dispersed enough to not be a concern. Leaving the objects whole would have risked them being found and used/recycled.
One of my a ex-girlfriend's mother was one of the doctors that tended to some of the sick. She didn't like to talk about it, saying the movie covered what she saw but, ~20 years later (at the time we were dating) she didn't like to remember what she went through.
I vividly remember her talking about it because she tried to end the conversation with a joke ("don't poke holes in stuff") that didn't land but I had a polite chuckle to move on.
That's really interesting. I've always wondered what those doctors went through. Radiation exposure must have been so far down the list of likely diagnoses...
From a person not much involved with it, but from the same city. For a short period, there was a massive fear around it, and the risk of mass contamination was in the population day to day talk. You see, the Goiânia incident was almost a year and a half after the Chernobyl incident, which just made the situation worse.
As soon as the tests came back and most of the population was ok, most of the fear in the people and medical professionals alike began to fade away.
After that, most of our worries began to switch into waste management and what to make with all the soil and things that were contaminated in the process
It seems strange that this Wikipedia page keeps getting posted on HN. It is kind of an interesting event, but what exactly is the point of bringing it up over and over? If it is that important then wouldn't it make more sense to write just a little bit about the context and how it relates to modern products and practices which have changed in the following decades?
I posted this article. I was reading about Brazil on Wikipedia and the rabbit hole brought me to this article which blew my mind. I was surprised I'd never heard about it before, and wanted to share with the community because it seemed likely others would find it interesting as well. That turned out to be true (plus I think @dang boosted the article to help it get attention)
HN isn't just about entrepreneurship. It's really about any kind of cerebral topic. Anyway, it is STEM related which is a significant part of HN.
That is all valid and good, but I would suggest that in order to make HN as good as it can be it might be worth searching for a link before posting it. Even if posting the link is still the right thing to do this offers the potential of reflecting on the dozens of past threads in order to understand more. I used the HN search feature on this title and found around over a dozen previous threads many of which were small yet interesting.
HN has a built-in duplication checker that automatically redirects to the most recent submission of an article within a certain time. If it isn't working properly then Dan would update it, or mark as [Dupe] let the community member know to stop.
Having new conversations about old topics is a normal part of communication between humans. Search shows this article is posted on average once per year which is hardly beating a dead horse on old exhausted discussions. I'm sensing there are reasons beneath the surface of why this is affecting you so deeply.
It's not affecting me deeply. Why are you being reactive and emotional? There are other Wikipedia pages that do not get posted every year or so thus your objection to my observation and suggestion is unreasonable.
I don't understand why people thought it was a good idea to crack open medical equipment with radiation symbols on it and play with the stuff they found inside.
Because not everyone has the education to know that it's dangerous. If you left school at age 12 to support your family (assuming you made it that far), it's not likely that you'd know what the symbol even means.
If anyone else is interested in more information about the case, this is the best properly sourced article I could find. It's in portuguese but translation works well.
133 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] threadThe International Isotopes team sawed into the holder for the source, which otherwise would not have fit into the transport vessel, but then cut into the source itself. That released about 2,900 curies of the material, contaminating 13 people and all seven floors of the facility, according to DOE’s March 30 report on the accident.
https://www.exchangemonitor.com/seattle-cesium-spill-clean-y...
[0] https://www.saldo.ch/fileadmin/content/files/artikel/2016/wo...
[1] https://www.ensi.ch/de/2014/11/05/kkl-beschaedigungen-am-pri...
If you're not auditing your rare-action groups adherence to standards via indepdent, out-of-chain assessment, assume they're hopelessly broken.
Failure to drill and audit is professional incompetence at this stage.
December 2, 2001 – Lia radiological accident: In the village of Lia, Georgia three lumberjacks discovered two 90Sr cores from Soviet radioisotope thermoelectric generators. These were of the Beta-M type, built in the 80s, with an activity of 1295 TBq each. The lumberjacks were scavenging the forest for firewood, when they came across two metal cylinders melting snow within a one meter radius laying in the road. They picked up these objects to use as personal heaters, sleeping with their backs to them. All lumberjacks sought medical attention individually, and were treated for radiation injuries. One patient, DN-1, was seriously injured and required multiple skin grafts. After 893 days in the hospital, he was declared dead after sepsis caused by complications and infections of a radiation ulcer on the subject's back. [48] The disposal team consisted of 24 men who were restricted to a maximum of 40 seconds worth of exposure (max. 20mSv) each while transferring the canisters to lead-lined drums.
October 21, 1994 – a large caesium-137 source was stolen by scrap metal scavengers in Tammiku, Männiku, Saku Parish, Estonia. The man who carried the source home received a 4,000 rad whole-body dose and died 12 days after first taking it. In addition, the man's stepson sustained radiation burn injuries to his hands after he found and touched the source after the man had placed it inside a kitchen drawer
and the following stories are new to me and very disturbing. radiation is a long lasting invisible fire. not too scary except that we can't see it without tools.
January 23, 2008 – A licensed radiology technologist, Raven Knickerbocker, at Mad River Community Hospital in Arcata, California performed 151 CT scan slices on a single 3 mm level on the head of a 23-month-old child over a 65-minute period. The child suffered radiation burns (skin erythema) to a small strip of his face and head. In one report, an independent investigation of the child's blood was said to have found "substantial chromosomal damage"[65] but subsequent reports reported no lasting harm.[66] The technologist was fired, and her license was permanently revoked on March 16, 2011 by the state of California, citing "gross negligence".[65] The hospital's radiology manager, Bruce Fleck, testified that Knickerbocker's conduct was "a rogue act of insanity".
October 2011 – At a hospital in Rio de Janeiro, a 7-year-old girl was treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia with whole brain radiation. The prescriptions were done manually in a form with no formal peer review process. Because of an error in the registration of the number of sessions, she received the full dose in each session of radiotherapy. Even with early toxicity, the doctor refused to assess the patient, because some of the complaints were usual. The full treatment was finished in about 8 sessions and the girl was admitted with radiation burns. She developed frontal lobe necrosis and died in June 2012. After an investigation, the physicist, technician, and physician were charged with manslaughter.[79]
"In the operating year 2014 were in the nuclear power plant Leibstadt (KKL) next to a reactor snap shutter several power transients on July 5, 2014 to be recorded. The integrity of the primary container ment was through in the first half of the year six holes impaired. ENSI provides confirms that the KKL meets the approved operating conditions always adhered to."
There is this:
"In 2008, two fire extinguishers were installed at the Leibstadt Nuclear Power Station. In so doing, six holes were pierced in the primary containment of the reactor, in order to insert screws. Five of the six holes were full of screws, whereas the sixth was only covered by a bracket. The confinement barrier that notably isolates the reactor vessel and the core of the reactor is a basic element for security, because it is an obstacle to the emission of radioactive elements into the environment. The holes were discovered accidentally by an employee who was doing rounds."(https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/the-norther... quoting a Greenpeace blogger)
Edit: Ok, this is hilarious:
"November 6, 2014 The Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate (ENSI) has filed criminal charges against Greenpeace activists that were involved in a protest at the Beznau nuclear power plant in March this year. The activists are charged with causing damage to property. The charges were filed on Monday with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. According to the ENSI, the protestors jumped over the fence surrounding the reactor and cut some wires. They then climbed the reactor building and drilled holes into the secondary containment wall. The charges also cover another incident in 2008 at the Leibstadt nuclear plant, also in Aargau, where holes were allegedly drilled by activists to install two fire extinguishers. The damage was only discovered in June this year."
In 2008, activists snuck in, installed two fire extinguishers, and snuck out without anyone noticing.
The NeoTeds are becoming increasingly common in public discourse I've noticed. The damn industrial revolution and it's consequences.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
No, I don't think I'm out of line speaking for people from third world countries here, those people were thieving idiots who wanted money more than they cared about survival or the health and safety of their family.
Somehow, most people exist and survive without thieving. But NeoTrots love to act as if theft, even incredibly dumb and self-harmful theft, is some necessary and noble act.
Which means that, necessarily, some don't. Should they die rather than steal?
I have a lot more sympathy for people trying to scrape together money to feed their family than for people who smash things and cause environmental contamination for the lulz.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Individual greed is often limited by the fact that we are all humans in the end. Business greed is limited by competition and the fact that they have to still participate in the society. But politician's reckless behavior is often unhinged and unchecked.
No, its not, and its obviously not if “business" and “State” greed are not, because those things don't actually exist as separate things, they are just names for special cases of combinations of individual behavior.
It's due both to the fact that there is nothing above to supervise (the State is an ultimate authority, with nothing, not even other state, above) and that pretty much every controversial decision is taken in the name and for the good of - The People - an abstract concept even more divorced from reality.
There are limited counterexamples in specific situations, but I don't believe that we have yet figured out a viable alternative to "the state" for organizing human societies at large scale.
The private-enterprise transatlantic slave trade is good for another 100m or so.
Generic comments usually come from reflexive reactions [2], which tend to be quick and shallow. What we want on HN are curious conversations, which are a different species altogether.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Dying later of alcoholism is no penance.
[edit] go on, explain the flag.
Still remarkably minor. This isn't even strong evidence of lax safety standards.
The IAEA also characterizes it that way. They consider it one of the 7 worst accidents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Sc...
Be warned that some include pretty gruesome medical photos of people who got severely irradiated.
"Meanwhile, the ownership of the clinic's assets was being discussed in court, and the cobalt 60 teletherapy unit was moved to the new facilities and the cesium 137 teletherapy unit was abandoned in its original place due to being seized."
Sounds like the root cause was stupid bureaucrats, but that must of course not be admitted in public.
EDIT - All good points below.
And the "handover" to the new owners was very acrimonious, with the new and old owners fighting in court. What seems clear is that IGR lost access to the location and filed several complaints about the machine being left there.
If IGR was securing the machine and trying to get it moved before they were thrown out of the location and prevented from visiting it as they claim, I don't think they're to blame at all. Of course details are fuzzy on that.
---
EDIT: According to this court sentence [1], IGR never notified CNEM:
> Then, under pressure to leave the site, the IGR transferred its headquarters to another address, and ended up abandoning the obsolete Cesium-137 pump in the old building, without even notifying the CNEN or the State Health Secretariat of the fact.
> On 05/04/87, the demolition of the building began, by order of the former partner of IGR, AMAURILLO MONTEIRO DE OLIVEIRA, culminating with the almost total destruction of the original building, which left it without a roof, doors or windows, despite the existence of the aforementioned Cesium-137 pump on the site, without any warnings or notices.
---
EDIT2: According again to the court sentence, the demolition was ordered by former partner of IGR, who had to pay 100k for the whole ordeal.
> On 05/04/87, the demolition of the building began, by order of the former partner of IGR, AMAURILLO MONTEIRO DE OLIVEIRA, culminating with the almost total destruction of the original building, which left it without a roof, doors or windows, despite the existence of the aforementioned Cesium-137 bomb on the site, without any warnings or notices.
---
[1] https://jus.com.br/jurisprudencia/16292/sentenca-na-acao-civ...
But more importantly, "to seize" means to "take possession", doesn't it? And you need a license to possess a teletherapy machine, for the very good reason that the damn thing is dangerous. IGR had a license. The bureaucrats didn't. Neither did the new site owner, landlord, whatever you want to call them. They still took possession, by force.
Property rights are a set of rules. Nuclear safety regulations are a set of rules. These are not the same kind of rules, though. Not understanding the difference kills people. The court didn't understand the difference.
It belonged to them so it was first and foremost their responsibility to take care of it and not to leave it behind.
The Wikipedia page is too succinct to know what were the reasons for the courts to prevent removal later on but it does say that it was the court that took the decision to finally post a guard on site (albeit obviously a poor one), not the owners.
> The fate of the abandoned site was disputed in court between IGR and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, then owner of the premises
My understanding is that this is how the court got involved, not because of any radioactive materials; IGR owner tried to make the court aware & let him retrieve the radioactive materials but had no luck.
It is admittedly unclear if the guard was posted to protect the radioactive materials or just the building in general. However, do note that guard is also not one of the named defendants (if it was his responsibility specifically to protect the capsule, I argue that he failed big time and should've been prosecuted for it; if he was just told "guard the building", it's a different issue in my mind).
--
[edit] Also it seems that IGR were _forced_ to leave the caesium behind, in the first place: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29148480
The only thing that seems clear-ish is that IGR considered that the device belonged to them according to their actions as described. If so it is very reasonable that they be held to account.
This does not mean that there aren't other responsibilities or that officials/the government tried to cover their asses later on. The Wikipedia article does mention, though that the National Nuclear Energy Commission ended up being ordered to pay compensation to the victims, which at face value sounds like an acknowledgement that they also bore some responsibility.
It also says that the thieves were not involved in the civil suit without mention of anything else. This may be an important point because the goal of a civil suit is to get money so there may be little point in suing poor people... They are obviously guilty of theft (criminal), and damage to property (criminal and civil), beyond that it's quite unclear and they did pay a heavy price.
It sounds pretty cut-and-dry. They were physically prevented from removing the equipment and they alerted the authorities to let then know how dangerous it was.
Again, it's hard to second guess based on a few lines on Wikipedia because there is no details but the main point remains that it does not sound strange at all that those who claim to be the owners be held to account (among others).
IGN and a lawyer expert in the matter claimed that the authorisation for moving the machine could only come from CNEN.
If anything, that's gross negligence from CNEN. IGR seemed very exasperated during the whole process, if they were really fighting court orders that prevented them from having access to the place (and the machine).
--
EDIT: However, according to this court sentence [2], it seems that IGR never told anything to CNEM:
> Then, under pressure to leave the site, the IGR transferred its headquarters to another address, and ended up abandoning the obsolete Cesium-137 bomb in the old building, without even notifying the CNEN or the State Health Secretariat of the fact.
> On 05/04/87, the demolition of the building began, by order of the former partner of IGR, AMAURILLO MONTEIRO DE OLIVEIRA, culminating with the almost total destruction of the original building, which left it without a roof, doors or windows, despite the existence of the aforementioned Cesium-137 bomb on the site, without any warnings or notices.
--
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20040309113338/http://www.jornal...
[2] https://jus.com.br/jurisprudencia/16292/sentenca-na-acao-civ...
But sending a letter, even letters, to the CNEN does not absolve the owner's responsibility. It just shows that several organisations seem not to have done what they should have.
If this was indeed true and they acted on it, then it would absolve them. However a judge disagreed, so they also had to pay 100k.
---
EDIT: On the second page of the document above, the judge mentions that owners of IGR were free from paying. Only the nuclear physicist (Flamarion) and a former partner who ordered the demolition (Amaurillo) had to pony up the 100k.
This is the key line for me. Why did Saura Taniguti summon police force to prevent the removal of such a hazardous object?
The link above is helpful but you have to dig through a very long Portuguese website to find this key nugget (via Google translate):
> However, at the end of 1985, this institute stopped working in these facilities and moved to other new facilities. Meanwhile, the property of the clinic's services was disputed in court, and the cobalt 60 teletherapy unit was transferred to the new facilities and the teletherapy unit in Cesio 137 was abandoned in its original place because it was embargoed.
> Most part of the clinic was demolished as well as adjacent properties. The treatment rooms in the fueron were demolished but were in a ruined state, abandoned. The date has not been notified to the licensing authority - Comisión Nacional de Energía Nuclear: CNEN.
https://scienceinfo.net/nuclear-disaster-from-a-stolen-medic... adds that:
> According to [Saura Taniguti], because there was a dispute between IGR and Saint Vincent de Paul Association - which owned the real estate block - where the IGR Hospital was located, and the court had a sealed order and cut it [sic]. security guards should all equipment in the hospital must remain the status quo.
My guess is the events were probably something a bit like the following:
1. IGR decides to relocate.
2. The technicians in IGR seemed very aware of how dangerous the Cesium source was. It was likely installed in a large machine, that would be inaccessible until most of the other items in the facility had been relocated.
3. Furthermore, to move such a source, they would not just pick it up and carry it in their pocket - you'd book perhaps an armored/lead-lined car, carry Gieger counters, dose badges, and wear contamination suits in case of an incident. Speculation: IGR thought it would be prudent to have most of the facility moved by untrained movers, but leave the nuclear source in place to reduce risk of an incident. Once the facility was emptied, they could bring in the the hazmat suits and move the source more safely.
4. All articles agree that the landlord, SVPA, is unhappy. Speculation: IGR had to terminate its lease early, or SVPA couldn't find a new tenant to cover their losses on the space.
5. After the initial move of the "easy" items, SVPA learns some "important equipment" is still on premises. They move to seal the building, to gain leverage in court negotiations.
6. The court negotiations go on for two years. Meanwhile, the developer moves to demolish the property so that it may be redeveloped so they can monetize the land. Speculation: offers were made to move the radiation source, but this would only be allowed if IGR would, for example, agree to pay for the cost of the broken lease and lost rent. (This is almost the exact situation of the SFO Safer, the oil storage unit off the coast of Yemen; people want to make it safe, and have been try to for years; but the group controlling access to the vessel is unwilling to grant free access to it, because the vessel in its current state is too valuable for negotiations).
7. The IGR was prevented "by police" from moving the source on May 4 1987. While the source could have been carried out by one person, nobody who knew how dangerous it was would just casually carry it out. Speculation IGR made a last-ditch to recover the source, and a task force arrived with e.g. Geiger counters, hazmat suits and a containment vessel. This did not go unnoticed -- authorities were notified; police c...
According to court documents from 2000, the order to demolish the property came from one of the IGR [former] partners, Amaurillo Monteiro de Oliveira.
However this part of the court sentence doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If this were true then they wouldn't get away with only paying 100k... I'm trying to find other court documents, or maybe an appeal.
> On 05/04/87, the demolition of the building began, by order of the former partner of IGR, AMAURILLO MONTEIRO DE OLIVEIRA, culminating with the almost total destruction of the original building, which left it without a roof, doors or windows, despite the existence of the aforementioned Cesium-137 bomb on the site, without any warnings or notices.
[1] https://jus.com.br/jurisprudencia/16292/sentenca-na-acao-civ...
---
EDIT: On the second page, it is mentioned that only two of the former IGR partners had to pay up: Amaurillo, probably for the reason above, and the nuclear physicist Flamarion Barbosa Goulart.
EDIT 2: Ok, so it looks like he was indeed a former partner in IGR. Why he ended up ordering the demolishment, is beyond me. It seems the other IGR partners didn't have to pay anything.
> B) I exclude the FEDERAL UNION, CARLOS DE FIGUEIREDO BEZERRIL and CRISEIDE CASTRO DOURADO, ORLANDO ALVES TEIXEIRA from the procedural relationship due to passive illegitimacy (art. 3º, c/c art. 267, VI, of the CPC);
However it seems it's not clear if it was a clerical error or something more complex than that.
[1] https://jus.com.br/jurisprudencia/16292/sentenca-na-acao-civ...
> On September 16, Alves succeeded in puncturing the capsule's aperture window with a screwdriver, allowing him to see a deep blue light coming from the tiny opening he had created. He inserted the screwdriver and successfully scooped out some of the glowing substance. Thinking it was perhaps a type of gunpowder, he tried to light it, but the powder would not ignite. [...] On September 18, Alves sold the items to a nearby scrapyard. That night, Devair Alves Ferreira, the owner of the scrapyard, noticed the blue glow from the punctured capsule. Thinking the capsule's contents were valuable or even supernatural, he immediately brought it into his house. Over the next three days, he invited friends and family to view the strange glowing substance. On September 21, at the scrapyard, one of Ferreira's friends succeeded in freeing several rice-sized grains of the glowing material from the capsule using a screwdriver. Ferreira began to share some of them with various friends and family members.
> The day before the sale to the third scrapyard, on September 24, Ivo, Devair's brother, successfully scraped some additional dust out of the source and took it to his house a short distance away. There he spread some of it on the concrete floor. His six-year-old daughter, Leide das Neves Ferreira, later ate an egg while sitting on this floor. She was also fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, applying it to her body and showing it off to her mother. Dust from the powder fell on the egg she was consuming; she eventually absorbed 1.0 GBq and received a total dose of 6.0 Gy, more than a fatal dose even with treatment. [...] She was buried in a common cemetery in Goiânia, in a special fiberglass coffin lined with lead to prevent the spread of radiation. Despite these measures, news of her impending burial caused a riot of more than 2,000 people in the cemetery on the day of her burial, all fearing that her corpse would poison the surrounding land.
It's easy to think the victims were stupid for playing with a weird glowing material but these are likely uneducated people who're just trying to get by. That they were able to run into such a dangerous substance is a tragedy.
I'd be binge drinking too if some invisible dust killed my entire family.
Jesus.
> Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them, the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory.
Holy shit! I've seen some bad employers while working in occupational medicine but this is on a whole new level.
As it turns out, when you have highly radioactive stuff in your buildings, you should probably clean that radioactive stuff out when abandoning said building.
The best thing to do I think is to make sure nobody can even accidentally find it. Drill a deep hole (miles) where you know it won't end up in the earth's mantle while the material is still dangerous, fill it with nuclear waste, seal it and forget about it. The chances of someone accidentally finding it again thousands of years down the line are minimal.
Warnings only make people more curious. I don't remember any warning sign from >1000 years ago that actually keep people away.
Also not every country has a big desert :)
That sounds like just the sort of premise for an "eventually it was found" story. How about the exact opposite of this: rather than rely on obscurity/information-hiding, make it widely known that X is where the dangerous stuff is and it is an absolute no-go.
That way, everyone will know that anyone within a Y-radius of X is exactly where they shouldn't be, for widely understood reasons.
ISO 21482 specifies an extremely scary-looking radiation symbol [1], to be placed inside such equipment (radiography/radiotherapy etc) as a last-ditch warning. The message might well get through even to a barely-literate scrap thief.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol#Ionizing_radiati...
IIUC this is just water with sugar and a fluorescent dye, not radioactive material (except the natural amount of radioactive deuterium and potassium, that is not enough to make it glow).
(I think I saw something like this here in Argentina, but I don't remember the name and I can't find it in Google. But this example is very similar to what I remember from the ads.)
> It depicts, on a red background, a black trefoil with waves of radiation streaming from it, along with a black skull and crossbones, and a running figure with an arrow pointing away from the scene. The radiating trefoil suggests the presence of radiation, while the red background and the skull and crossbones warn of danger. The figure running away from the scene is meant to suggest taking action to avoid the labeled material. The new symbol is not intended to be generally visible, but rather to appear on internal components of devices that house radiation sources so that if anybody attempts to disassemble such devices they will see an explicit warning not to proceed any further.
Probably there should be some sort of liability for people putting hazard labels on things that aren't hazardous. Ever looked at an MSDS for sodium chloride?
Applying this standard we’d have run away from petrol a long, long time ago. IOW, the standards you seem to use are unrealistic, and unevenly applied. This really isn’t against you: this exact line of reasoning is quite common and demonstrates that we are terrible at risk management.
- convey the danger factually
- make people believe or care about it
- discourage young/stupid/intoxicated/reckless/nihilistic people
- discourage smart people who are intrigued by the danger and will be compelled to explore as much of it as they can
- discourage angry people who want to bring the danger to their enemies.
https://util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/character.jsp?a=2622
https://codepoints.net/U+2622
The source was protected by a shutter, the thieves forced it open. If it was locked in a safe, they would have cut that open.
I remember a quote about a large demonstration that took place in Afghanistan or Iraq after the death of a couple local people.
"Look at these people out here, all upset. Are they here demonstrating because we have are military in their country? No. Are they upset because we accidentally bombed a school or house? No. They are upset because a couple guys walked past 3 signs saying "Danger Keep Out" in 5 languages, climbed over 2 fences and got into the live fire range, found some unexploded ordinance and managed to blow themselves up with it. That is what they are upset about."
Glowing stuff can also be very expensive, but you need to know people who might be interested, and they usually aren’t the best company. Also, proper equipment to manipulate it.
I vividly remember her talking about it because she tried to end the conversation with a joke ("don't poke holes in stuff") that didn't land but I had a polite chuckle to move on.
As soon as the tests came back and most of the population was ok, most of the fear in the people and medical professionals alike began to fade away.
After that, most of our worries began to switch into waste management and what to make with all the soil and things that were contaminated in the process
> Cesium 137 - The Nightmare of Goiânia
HN isn't just about entrepreneurship. It's really about any kind of cerebral topic. Anyway, it is STEM related which is a significant part of HN.
Having new conversations about old topics is a normal part of communication between humans. Search shows this article is posted on average once per year which is hardly beating a dead horse on old exhausted discussions. I'm sensing there are reasons beneath the surface of why this is affecting you so deeply.
http://mapadeconflitos.ensp.fiocruz.br/conflito/go-vitimas-d...
What happened there I wonder.