Posted on 08/26/2005 12:15:37 PM PDT by jb6
VLADIVOSTOK, August 26 (RIA Novosti, Anatoly Ilyukhov) - The industrial equipment confiscated Friday in the seaport of Vladivostok in the Far East has been found to contain cesium-137, a very strong source of radiation, a radiation control organization official said Friday.
Primtekhnopolis radiation and chemical security service head Vitaly Aldanov said eight pieces of lead industrial equipment, six of which were highly radioactive, were confiscated from scrap metal being transported in the port.
"If a person holds such a source in their hand for two minutes, the hand will then have to be amputated. Longer contact with such a source is fatal," Aldanov said.
The units were produced in the late 1970s and are unmarked. They emanated radiation recorded at 56 milliroentgen per hour. Sources taken out of the units emanate 220 roentgen per hour, which is thousands of times higher than normal background.
After a thorough examination, Primtekhnopolis experts will bury the radioactive sources, Aldanov said.
Uh... just what was this 'lead, industrial equipment'... lead boxes maybe?
Is this something that could be used in nuclear tests or some other experimental radiation work? It seems at best bizzare that anything mundane would have have that kind of radioactivity.
"After a thorough examination, Primtekhnopolis experts will bury the radioactive sources, Aldanov said"
Remind me not to visit this area for the next 5,000 years.
"Comrade, due to your arrest you are sentenced to forced labor. Grab that shovel over there, i have something for you to bury over by the side of the road."
A true no-nonsense approach to nuc waste disposal....no wonder there are villages on Amurksey Bay that glow in the dark.
I've read where free lance salvage people(thieves) have run off with all the scrap and equipment at Simipalitinks nuclear test grounds in the former USSR.
Interesting article ping
ping
....and then there's that double-something-mercury that killed that scientist....one drop and dead in a couple of weeks....
450 is the LD 50 dose. IE 50% of people exposed to this level will die. Cesium 137 is the crap that kills people after a nuclear explosion.
Are you referring to red mercury?
No, it was dimethyl mercury
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/dimethylmercury/dmmjm.htm
A chemist friend of mine said that one drop on a finger is lethal. He'd don a tourniquet and amputate the hand if he had skin exposure. It's terribly dangerous.
137Cs is a fission product and constitutes a small fraction of delayed fallout activity from nuclear explosions. Most of the activity in fallout is from shorter-lived fission forms and neutron-irradiated materials, such as the weapons casing (especially if it is a jacketed, or "dirty" weapon), and materials near the detonation point if it is a ground burst. The fission yield is a little over 6% from 235U fission.
There was a case in Brazil some years back. It seems a Doctor closed his office in a shanty town and just abandoned all the equipment. One piece of equipment was an X-ray machine which consisted of a lead cylinder and a shutter arrangement which allowed you to "open" a window in the cylinder and allow gamma rays from the Cesium-137 contained therein to escape in a more or less controlled beam. Thus serving the function of an X-ray tube without requiring an electrical power source.
After some time had passed it seems that kids broke into the office and being kids, poked around the abandoned equipment until they managed to breach the lead cylinder. They became fascinated by the "sparkly" powder that it contained and took hand fulls of it to pass around to their friends. They even used it to paint their faces because to sparkles reminded them of Carnival makeup. Needles to say, the health officials were soon involved as soon as the nature of the resultant "strange illness" became apparent. All told more then twenty died.
Regards,
GtG
Don't forget the abandoned/lost/forgotten RTGs.
Thanks for the ping, Oorang.
Very interesting.
Sounds like a power source for a remote weather sensing device. The Soviets scattered radiation-powered devices around like dandelion seeds.
Bump
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