Posted on 07/21/2005 11:25:01 AM PDT by Ditto
Thr Trinity explosion device was carried on his lap. An equally powerful explosion could be carried in a backpack onto a subway.......
Several feet of high explosive around it, however??? That would be one bulky backpack
Yes, I read about that incident. Imagine turning on a stirrer and all hell breaks loose. I don't understand why they opine that maybe the "flash" happened because of a short-circuit in the stirrer motor. Daghlian and Slotin got much smaller doses and in those cases witnesses described seeing a "blue flash" of Cherenkov radiation. It would seem to me that there would have been a hell of a blue flash in this case if the guy got 12K rad.
Maybe the radiation blast was so intense that it broke down the insulation inside the motor and that shorted it out.
For me the most chilling story is the one about the Israeli guy who went into a radiation sterilizer to clear a product jam while the cobalt-60 source was exposed (the product jam hid it from visibility, but didn't hid him from the radiation).
Google the phrase Soreq JS6500 to find it. The guy was exposed between one and two minutes (he wasn't sure how long) at 1000 rad/minute. He lasted 36 days, but was given heroic levels of treatment including a bone marrow transplant from his brother.
(steely)
Nah, I was quoting a different poster. That's why his comments were in italics. Just like yours are now. I agree with you that having a large lawn mower or small car in your backpack might be a giveaway. Still, I have no doubt that Muslims can get an EMP up in the air. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon. I don't underestimate them...
It has been a while (1978) since my NRRPT certification, but I do recall that the blue flash of Cerenkov radiation occurs within the liquid of the observer's eyeball. They used to say that if you see the blue flash, you're a dead man.
The full Soreq report is here (Adobe Acrobat PDF document):
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub925_web.pdf
The report includes some pictures of the victim in various stages of acute radiation syndrome, and lots of microscopic pictures of different organs showing the radiation damage. It all goes to show that you should never bypass safety systems and interlocks, especially when you're dealing with a source measuring 340,000 Curies!
Maybe this is why John Cusack is so far left now? :)
Wow! Damn.
Thanks for that.
That answers one of my questions. I was wondering how you get Cherenkov radiation in free air, because my understanding was that C-radiation is caused when charged particles going at nearly the speed of light penetrate a boundary between a fast-speed-of-light medium and a slower-speed-of-light medium (like free space to water).
Your explaination sounds right. If you are unlucky enough to witness a criticality accident at close range, you don't see a sheath of blue light around the fuel, like that underwater in a cooling pool. The blue flash you see is actually inside your eye, as alpha or beta particles shoot through you.
The Soreq incident guy reported that his "were burning," but not a blue flash. Maybe it was too dim for him to notice in the ambient light of the sterilizer chamber. His dose was accumulated over a fairly long time, compared to that of the individuals at Los Alamos who were, after all, working with weapons-grade material.
Spooky stuff. Not that I wouldn't mind working with it myself.
(steely)
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