Posted on 05/05/2018 7:12:14 PM PDT by EdnaMode
A small amount of radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium about the size of a U.S. quarter is missing from an Idaho university that was using it for research, leading federal officials on Friday to propose an $8,500 fine.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Idaho State University can't account for about a 30th of an ounce (1 gram) of the material that's used in nuclear reactors and to make nuclear bombs.
The amount is too small to make a nuclear bomb, agency spokesman Victor Dricks said, but could be used to make a dirty bomb to spread radioactive contamination.
"The NRC has very rigorous controls for the use and storage of radioactive materials as evidenced by this enforcement action," he said of the proposed fine for failing to keep track of the material.
Dr. Cornelis Van der Schyf, vice president for research at the university, blamed partially completed paperwork from 15 years ago as the school tried to dispose of the plutonium.
"Unfortunately, because there was a lack of sufficient historical records to demonstrate the disposal pathway employed in 2003, the source in question had to be listed as missing," he said in a statement to The Associated Press. "The radioactive source in question poses no direct health issue or risk to public safety."
(Excerpt) Read more at idahostatesman.com ...
That doesn’t seem right to me. A U.S. nickel weighs 5 grams. Yet the story says that 1 gram of plutonium is the size of a quarter?
Plutonium has a density of 19.816 g/cm3 - i.e., greater than Gold.
The 1-gram disk, if it is about the diameter of a U.S. quarter, must be very thin*, and would have a volume of 0.00308 cubic inches (yes: about three thousandths of a cubic inch).
Regards,
*Given that a U.S quarter has a diameter of 0.955 inches, and thus an area of 0.716 square inches, a disk of Plutonium having the same diameter, but a weight of 1 gram, would have to have a thickness of 0.0043 inches = 1/232nds of an inch.
U.S. quarters, being composed of metals (copper and nickel) having a considerably lower density (roughly one-fourth as dense as Plutonium), and having a mass of 5.67 grams, are therefore much thicker (0.069 inches). The 1-gram Plutonium disc would thus be roughly one-sixteenth as thick as a U.S. quarter.
Congress sold the Plutonium.
No, no one else here has ever heard of it (I guess that FReepers routinely don't read nearly 80-year-old copies of the Amarillo Daily News).
Would you be so kind as to provide the text of that article?
Regards,
What???
I wonder if this was a scientist speculating on a bomb made of fissionable material and the energy yield of such a device if made. Such thoughts would have to compare the energy release to something everyone at the time could relate too ie tnt. History shows that efforts to build a device were underway. This is just me speculating about someone else speculating. The word invention may be to strong at that point in history.
Please would everyone check down the back of their sofa, just to make sure it’s not there.
Check sources have wandered home with users in their pockets on occasion. The sh3t storm accompanying the event and the hell the person perpetrating said event had to endure, soon made the individual regret qualifying as a source user. The worst part was the custody paper trail ratted out the culprit. Now where to hide.
Without proper shielding it will be very dangerous to anyone handling it.
I doubt that. It’s probably in the hands of the North Koreans or some other bad actor working on a collection.
Cohen, who was a health physicist, made the point that the two million fatal doses per pound applied to plutonium as an aspirate. And the entire dose has to be aspirated. Dispensed as an airborne cloud it would quickly settle and only a very small fraction would ever be inhaled by human beings.
Ingested, plutonium is no more toxic than caffeine. Cohen publicly offered to ingest the same amount of plutonium as Nadar would caffeine.
Cohen makes the point that if plutonium were simply washed down the sink, only about 0.01% would ever be ingested, mostly harmlessly. No one is proposing careless disposal of plutonium, merely that the hysteria over plutonium is not founded on facts. When facts contend with hysteria, hysteria wins.
Many radioactive sources are “sealed” in small containers making their handling easier and reducing the odds of contamination.
That makes perfect sense. It also makes perfect sense that whoever wrote the story left out that important detail.
Actually FReepers post from all sorts of ancient newspapers. I still enjoy one Freeper who constantly posts from the 1857 Harpers Weekly.
Here it is. All of it. Amarillo Daily News, Aug 20, 1940. page 3. (Behind a paywall)
New Powerful Explosive Revealed! BURBANK. Calif., Aug. 19 (IF)—! Dr. Arthur W. Shaudopvsky. former Brussels scientist, said in an interview here a uranium explosive had been developed and tested in the United States which is “at least 15 times more powerful and perhaps almost 100 times more potent than TNT.”
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/15466148/
Dr. Shaudopvsky. who came here from Wilmington. Del., said he and two other research engineers tested the explosive in a remote spot and found that whereas 1,500 grams of high-power dynamite did 868 foot- pounds of work, the blast from only 100 grams of the uranium explosive accomplished 4,270 foot-pounds of work —with only the downward force measured.
This is prima facie nonsense.
A stick of dynamite [with a weight of about 190 grams] contains roughly 1 MJ (megajoule) of energy. - Wikipedia
1 foot pound-force = 1.36 joules - Wikipedia
The following are back-of-envelope calculations:
1,500 grams of dynamite is roughly equivalent to 8 sticks of dynamite and thus contains roughly 8 MJ of energy = 5.8 million foot pound-force of energy. This is about 6,700 times the quantity of energy cited in the article for 1,500 grams of dynamite and still about 1,350 times the amount of energy cited in the article for 100 grams of Uranium.
Regards,
I thought it was interesting when I read it. I know there was lots of FAKE NEWS even back then. Often used for filler.
That being said, it might have been aimed at German intelligence agencies. Even with the obvious mistakes (values too low by a factor of at least 1000X) - which could be attributed to a sloppy journalist - it might have been meant to attract the attention of German spies (who, of course, also employed press cutting services) and either lead them on a merry chase or on a wild goose chase.
Regards,
Reporters know less about radiation than about guns, just that they’re both bad and dangerous.
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