Is the idea of blameless postmortem that exotic in the general public? If I hear that a critical safety system failed, my first association isn't "find the individual closest to responsibility, and look into whether a criminal prosecution is feasible".
- "We have the ability to prosecute under the radiation safety act and we will certainly look at such prosecutions, and we've done that in the past," [Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson] said."
- "The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, this morning joined those disappointed to learn the maximum penalty for mishandling radioactive material in such a manner was $1,000."
I suspect the extend and target of postmortem blame varies considerably from culture to culture. An anecdote from the railroad traffic between Germany and Denmark:
"[In 2019, a DB Cargo freight train in Denmark caused an accident with a passenger train on its way to Copenhagen after a truck trailer flew off the freight train due to high winds. The German side was keen to find out who was responsible at the lowest level, i.e. the wagon inspector who had not adequately secured the freight on the freight train. The Danish side didn't care, the local authorities were concerned with structural responsibility. Not who caused the accident, but why could it happen! So in Denmark, the motto is: the process is the cause.]"
There are some old stereotypes of detail-obsessed Germans - far too busy measuring the growth rings of a tree with micrometers, and wondering why those are so close together - but never noticing that the tree is small, and growing in a well-shaded part of a large forest.
Not that surprising. The wagon inspector was a dane in denmark. The organizational responsibility was on german leaders in a german company. In the end nothing happened.
Matt Parker of Youtube fame also wrote a book called Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World which covers several post-mortems from the engineering space.
I found it interesting that he compared and contrasted the airline industry where failures are seen as systemic (don't blame the pilot, blame the system) and the medical industry where failures are typically seen as having personal liability (blame the surgeon).
Not to mention that higher fines and prosecution could easily lead to the opposite effect in such a case, namely hiding the fact that they lost the capsule.
It was extremely likely no one would have found it for years anyway.
- "lead to the opposite effect in such a case, namely hiding the fact that they lost the capsule."
If you think about it, the impact's more pervasive and serious than that. Even simply saying, "hey, isn't there a potential issue with this bolt" shifts the appearance of blame on the person who's asking. When something does go wrong, the lawyer-attitude types can point to your words, and say "look: they were aware of possibility X at time Y, and they failed to stop it. They were negligent". "If you raised issue A, why then did you fail to take actions B, C, and D, and document them appropriately? You were negligent". To discuss Issue A is high-friction and risky -- for all values of A.
That's at the core of legal culture: "don't put it in writing"; "don't talk to the opposing counsel"; "don't make public statements unless we vetted them (to be as vague as possible)". Opacity. What aspect of human nature underlies this? It's this: blame is nebulous, and it attaches to whatever's most visible. Guileless honesty is a *hazard* in a culture of suspicion.
Obviously that's the exact opposite of what you want from an engineering culture! You want anyone to be able to raise issues freely, fearlessly.
That's the true cost of a blaming-people culture. You're not merely disincentivizing communication at the very final stage ("cover up the disaster"); you disincentivize all communication about risk, at any time. Anything that places you visibly closer to responsibility is a peril.
The part that really drives me up the wall is when people complain about this kind of "don't ask don't tell" ass covering behavior and then turn right around and confirm it was the right course of action by calling for the book to be thrown left and right in every case of wrongdoing.
Naturally HN often has me doing laps on the ceiling.
What an engineer thinks: "Why not attach this thing to a beacon so that it can't be lost?"
What everybody else thinks: "Why not persecute everybody responsible to the fullest possible extent?" Which is just our reptilian brain looking for somebody to blame but isn't actually helping anything.
> What an engineer thinks: "Why not attach this thing to a beacon so that it can't be lost?"
Would the beacon survive for long while being irradiated?
Also, this thing was part of a reasonably large object (I assume one full of radiation warnings), but that object broke down during transport. If one attached a beacon, that similarly could end up detached from the capsule.
Well by all accounts (of people that seem competent on the internet...) the source is just fine as it's own beacon. Even detectable by a low flying helicopter with the right equipment.
Well, by the account of the article you are responding to the source has been lost.
Not very useful beacon if you don't detect when you lost it or you need to put an enormous search party to find it.
We have GPS devices with satellite comms that can periodically transmit information about where they are that anybody who plans to trek in the wilderness can buy and use to start a SAR operation.
But it already was larger; It was part of a “density gauge” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_densitometry). It’s not as if somebody but this in a trouser pocket (would be extremely foolish, of course) or laid it on the car’s dashboard (slightly less foolish, but still extremely so) and then lost it.
I wouldn’t know whether the pictures on that Wikipedia page resemble what this was on, but I expect it to have been of similar size.
The problem was that something (¿excessive car vibrations?, ¿a speed bump?, ¿bad packaging? ¿bad design of the gauge? That’s to be researched) dislodged it from that device and that it then dropped out of the car.
Now I wonder why wasn't it glued, packed or something in larger material. I think there should be something light and relatively non-opaque for radiation.
I am not asking to limit anybody's freedom. A beacon would be attached to radiation source.
Unless you are an individual who walks around with a highly toxic, highly dangerous radiation source, requiring it to have a beacon will not limit your freedom.
As to putting cameras to deter crime, they are shown not to work. The crime just moves to where there are no cameras. Or stupid people will crime anyway. US is leading or close to leading in both crime rates and incarceration rates, at least in the western world. Suggesting the basic premise of what US is doing may be flawed, from engineering standpoint.
Right. but things they have in common are questionable cost/benefit, and, undoubtedly, unintended consequences.
It also is not a better way to solve the problem. Now someone has to replace the batteries of the "beacon" or remember to charge it? How are they going to remember? Why not just have that same person remember to check that the source is secured properly?
Because "Just do the right thing first" isn't actually a good harm reduction or problem prevention strategy? Shit goes wrong and you should have a system where lots of shit has to go wrong all at the same time before it causes a problem.
Visible light is electromagnetic radiation too. Does this mean that an LED is the same thing as an AirTag?
I'm not sure if this specific source is isotropic or directional, but it's very possible for it to be both extremely hard to detect from even a couple of meters away, yet still pose a great hazard.
I think the idea would be to have a gieger counter in the vehicle near the pellet that can detect the pellet radiation, and sound an alarm in the vehicle if the pellet radiation is no longer detected, so the driver knows immediately that the pellet has become unsecured.
If it would have bounced just a few meters further off the road, landed in a ditch and get covered by something, or its emission beam angled away from the road/sky (for directional sources), it might never be found (or not before it causes some harm).
It is still good to place (organizational) blame and fines on such a thing, otherwise it's financially the most attractive option to take inappropriate risks.
People can really suck. It may be a corporation, doing the crime, but an individual made the decision to do it.
I remember a DJ, in Washington DC, talking about parking fines.
Parking in DC is expensive, with monthly passes, costing hundreds of dollars a month.
His reasoning was that he parked illegally in lots around the studio, and occasionally got tickets, that he paid without issue, and it cost him far less than getting a pass.
I mean, obviously that just means the fine isn't high enough. If it's within fine budget range rather than fine insurance, that's your problem right there.
That's an especially prevalent attitude in Australia for some reason. Even the US usually leaves the aggressive prosecution tough guy threats to prosecutors/police instead of politicians.
I think the response is pretty reasonable. Fines/punishments from regulators internalise externalities and disincentivise antisocial behaviour.
If Rio just writes off the fine without improving its processes in tandem then it could make sense for the regulator to intervene further, but in either case Rio should be on the hook for damages rather than WA taxpayers.
At what point do you think punishment is warranted when companies or individuals break regulations resulting in people being placed at risk? This isn't software where the impacts are some user inconvenience and maybe a bit of lost revenue. If this incident had gone just a little differently it could easily have resulted in deaths, people receiving massive radiation doses, or even hundreds or thousands of people getting enough exposure to raise their risk of cancer. Regulations around handling radioactive material are a lot like aviation regulations, they tend to be written in blood.
This is a short list of major radiation exposure incidents in the past few decades:
I am not surprised the found the capsule, I am surprised by the very professional way the company handled the case.
If you look at the timeline of events (see link from dang comment), they reacted extremely quickly and professionally, from the contractor doing the transport to Rio Tinto informing the authorities.
For me Rio Tinto was the company not taking care of our environment[0] in its operations, so for once, I am positively surprised.
[0]: Oil & gas are pretty good at it where there is no regulatory pressure.
Rio Tinto are never professional, they’re trying hard not to damage their rock bottom reputation further after the fact of stuffing something up, destroying something, being negligent. If they’re giving the appearance of being good at that, don’t mistake it for professionalism. It’s simply that they know the cost to them in the future of worldwide headlines in which they lost nuclear material.
Having recently learned about their pretty ambitious emissions targets I disagree with you.
I think they are strongly responding to a shift in higher demand for carbon neutral materials with their big clients. I read about a sustainability labelling of Aluminium using Blockchain technology and it sounds like they're quite invested in green tech...a flip from the mining companies of yore
I'm guessing that's because you don't work in a 800 million tonne per annum mining industry that routinely ships heavy equipment 1,000 - 2,000 km backwards and forwards and has done so for 50 years.
The equipment was logged when loaded on the 11th, the load sat and then travelled for a couple of days and was unloaded and then sat until it was first inspected (to have the capsule replaced) at which point the loss was noted and reported.
Feel free to explain how you would do this better in a cost effective manner.
I just checked some of the articles online, and didn't find any information on the capsule itself. More specifically, what it is used for in mining equipment.
BHP Billiton has claimed a West Australian record for the biggest open cut mine blast after detonating 11 million-tonnes of iron ore at its Jimblebar mine. More than 50 hectares of ground at the Pilbara mine was set off with more than 6,400 detonators.
The explosives used to create small atomic bomb scale blasts are carefully watched, as are the toxic chemicals used in gold processing, the crushers and screens which can make jam out of people, the HV electrics that can discharge and kill, the many propane tanks that can rupture and explode, the unstable stope slopes that can collapse and bury, ...
Come to think of it, everything about heavy mining is dangerous.
No one in W.Australian mining history has yet been killed by a stray Cs-137 source so in realistic terms they come a long way down the list in a domain that has seen hundreds of deaths per annum in the past.
I heard a story about someone who checks in a starting pistol (used for running races) because it ensures his luggage will never be lost or messed with.
For example: if they know there is a radioactive source on board the vehicle they should check for its presence and integrity as soon as it arrives at its destination.
Ideally they should check for its presence on board at the end of each transport day, perhaps by measuring the level of radiation near the box which contains the item.
> "The gorge is known primarily for a cave that was the only inland site in Australia with evidence of continuous human occupation for over 46,000 years, including through the last Ice Age. The cave was permanently destroyed by mining company Rio Tinto in May 2020."
And
> "On 11 September 2020, it was announced that, as a result of the destruction at Juukan Gorge, CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques and two other Rio Tinto executives would step down."
Slave labor under the Romans at Rio Tinto from 206 BCE onwards for two hundred years, or the 1888 Zalamea massacre, or the still linguring toxic legacy of the Panguna mine in PNG?
It's such a persistent ongoing problem with mining that I'm personally more inclined to blame the collective detached nature of consumers that demand products and yet turn a blind eye to the sourcing of that which they demand.
Blaming customers for companies malfeasance must have been one of the greatest deflection tactics ever invented and it saddens me deeply when it gets parroted verbatim by the general populace.
I generally agree, but I’ve seen it taken to an extreme when I found someone claiming that a park strewn with trash wasn’t the fault of those who left their trash behind, but instead the companies that use such ecologically unfriendly packaging.
You can't attack other users like this, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We ban accounts that break the site guidelines this way.
you trying to hold me personally responsible for other people accountability is at a foundamental level a repeat of the same deflection tactic as expressed above, and warrants a repeat of the same general concept: I do not bear any responsability in the atrocities that far away government allow to be inflicted on their own populace, and I do not profit from them, and the accountability rest on the government of the oppressed population, and they are accountable to the oppressed population and no other.
On the other hand, extrapolate your own question to the only logical conclusion, see how it goes. You cannot boicot sweat cobalt, there are not enough "sustainable" mines for that. Option two is either santion these countries into the ground or to invade then and export democracy. Good luck with that, bet their population will be real glad of your help. Your line of thinking is circular, offers no actionable solution, and it's ultimately just a way to distribute guilt moving it from the people actually exploiting the situation to people that have no choice in the matter.
The guns in 1888 didn't pull those triggers by themselves.
Shifting blame to regular people only serves to further insulate corporations from the harms and costs they have externalized, and we should be vigilant to make sure we are not enabling them.
The 1987 Brazilian accident in Goiânia was horrendous because the caesium-137 capsule was breached and there was widespread contamination by radioactive dust. I get chilled to the bone when I read the descriptions of people innocently playing with the curious glow-in-the-dark dust as a novelty, showing to their neighbors and friends.
> The apartment was fully settled in 1980. A year later, an 18-year-old woman who lived there suddenly died. In 1982, her 16-year-old brother followed, and then their mother. [All from leukemia]. [...] A new family moved into the apartment, and their son died from leukemia as well.
> A child's bed was located directly next to the wall containing the capsule.
Actually "haunted" locations are often linked to carbon monoxide and infrasound, IIRC. We generally don't blame ghosts for mysterious burns or other signs of radiation sickness.
It's possible that the apartment came furnished and that the bed being referred to was not a specific child's but rather a bed made for a child in which supposedly multiple children slept in before dying.
Does anyone else feel like this is slightly overblown? From my perspective it was a localised and relatively limited risk and had fairly obvious and achievable corrective actions with a relatively good chance of success.
It intrigues me that this seems to be perceived as something so calamitous/ risky.
I think you are missing the context around nuclear anything in Australia.
We have no nuclear powerplants. We have no nuclear submarines. Large portions of the country are staunchly against mining uranium. Most people don't know We operate a single nuclear reactor that only produces medical isotopes. There is no nuance on anything nuclear here because it is almost completely absent from the country.
It was an Australian nuclear scientist (who later became the South Australian Governor) who convinced the USofA that building an atomic weapon was in fact possible.
Australia has a reasonable number of people in the International weapons inspection (conventional and atomic) game.
Australia performs a significant amount of radiometric surveying.
There is no nuance on anything nuclear here (in Australia) because most people choose to remain unaware.
I'm guessing you mean the broader global usage applied to Australia as a whole:
Dutch economic experience where the manufacturing sector declined and suffered general inflation as a result of the booming natural gas sector.
ie: An exurberance of raw natural resources killing other sectors of the economy.
In the context of Western Australia, though, one might argue that the "Dutch curse" is consistently smashing your ships up against the shores of one of the more hostile coasts globally.
I don't disagree that nuclear anything is a big deal, but just wanted remind everyone that the British tested their nuclear bombs in the outback.. and Australia has ordered some nuclear subs.
Nuclear powered subs, there is no intent or request to provide nuclear weapons. It is not unusual for nuclear capable vessels to visit Australia and in the usual "will not confirm or deny" sense nobody is going to speak to visiting vessels with ICBM or tactical nuclear weapons.
But the formalism remains: Australian defence forces are not overtly seeking nuclear arms to operate under the Australian flag.
Australia has slipped quite a few places on the last World Press Freedom Index. Let's not forget that friendlyjordies, while also making comedy videos but also making videos on corruption, politicians and the gambiling industry, was targeted by a firebomb and his house burnt down. Luckily he was away and no one at home.
Right but there is no suggestion the firebombing was linked to any government or regulatory policy/action/initiative.
It's simply that he upset organised crime groups. These exist everywhere in the world and theres no suggestion the Australian authorities aren't investigating and trying to bring those responsible to justice.
Yes, because an organized crime group would never have a politician involved. That politician also might never mention to said crime group that an investigation might be difficult, ineffective, or simply take a very long time to determine those responsible.
On the world stage, this is not even a small blip.
But the fear of radiation is a deep seated one, cultivated over the last 80 years by constant bombardment (pun intended) of information and media showing the dangers and hazards of runaway nuclear fission.
You have a point but orphan sources are pretty legitimately scary, and have historically caused many horrible deaths and even more (survivable) suffering, often with the victims having no idea what is happening to them.
Radiological dangers are uniquely hazardous - bacteria and viruses dry out and die, poisons and acids can be neutralized. Almost every other hazard on Earth can be eradicated with nothing more than a good hot fire. But unstable isotopes answer to no one but time.
It may have come accross as I was belittling the seriousness or danger that the capsule poses to those who come into contact with it. That was not my intention.
The capsule is incredibly dangerous to anyones health.
My point was simply that, from my vantage point, the media coverage and attention that this incident has received is out of proportion to the likely impact that it will have (i.e the danger it poses to people on the world stage, or even on the national stage in Australia).
As an example, and again only from my vantage point, the situation with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station received less direct news coverage focusing on the dangers it would have posed to the whole European continent than it seems this single capsule is receiving.
Again, not saying the capsule is not a danger to people. Just agreeing that the attention is out of proportions.
> From my perspective it was a localised and relatively limited risk
Localized? Yes. But limited? You can't see radiation. The absolute worst case would be someone getting it stuck into a tire or a shoe, spreading radiation everywhere they go.
Radiation is not "spread" in the manner you are suggesting. The only affect on passers-by would be transient exposure - less than ideal, but not a fatal risk.
If the capsule were breached and radioactive material were spread, then that would be a disaster posing actual risk to the public at large.
> Radiation is not "spread" in the manner you are suggesting
"[in] 1987 in Goiânia, Brazil [..] a forgotten radiotherapy source was stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 of them were found to have been contaminated"
"In the consequent cleanup operation, topsoil had to be removed from several sites, and several houses were demolished. All the objects from within those houses, including personal possessions, were seized and incinerated"[0]
That incident would appear to confirm that radiation (from a radioactive source) is able to be "spread".
In the Wikipedia article it’s clear that the container of the caesium 137 was punctured and the grains of caesium powder were handled by many people and spread on surfaces.
That’s just the original source of beta particles being spread around rather than the beta radiation “spreading” in some way.
> Radiation is not "spread" in the manner you are suggesting. The only affect on passers-by would be transient exposure - less than ideal, but not a fatal risk.
The problem is secondary irradiation. Everything contaminated by exposure - even a car - has to be taken, destroyed and the waste dealt with as radioactive waste.
Like, you mean the entire 800 million tonnes of iron ore per annum delibrately exposed to radiation guages such as this all needs to be treated as radioactive waste?
Even after it's been turned to steel and worked into bridges, building, cars, etc?
I hadn't realised things were that serious :/
Still, I guess reality is in the middle ground and there are degrees to contamination here.
> Even after it's been turned to steel and worked into bridges, building, cars, etc?
For that reason metal recyclers run routine radiation scans on all incoming materials before contaminated material enters the supply chain [1][2]. And there have been a number of such incidents[3][4].
> For that reason metal recyclers run routine radiation scans
Just to be clear here .. are you actually claiming that raw iron ore tumbling through a loadout and being density scanned:
* actually contaminates the ore and converts it into the equivilant of radioactive waste?
* that metal recyclers are finding signs of > 800 million tonnes per annum of radiated metals?
* that no one has noticed this and seen fit to write an evironmental study paper about it?
Is there any chance here you conflating actual radioactive metals turning up in recycled metals with what is a long standing global practice that doesn't created dangerous radiatctive iron?
Uranium has been used for brightly colored ceramic glazes.
Americium is used in smoke detectors, and I assume doping with small amounts of radioactive materials occurs in other applications where encouraging cold sparking or arcing is desired.
Not in that sense. Localised in the sense that the dangerous zone was limited to a few tens of meters radius, and was unlikely to spread. As opposed to an airborne, or water soluble contamination which can spread to a wide area as the winds or the ground water flows.
One of the risks that was believed to exist was that the capsule had fallen onto the road, and could have become embedded in someone's car tire. That would then place the owner of that car within the few tens of meters radius multiple times a day, along with their neighbours, and anyone they park near on a regular basis.
Given the tiny size of the capsule, it's only dangerous because it's so concentrated. If it would be diluted by spreading to a wide area, it would just slightly raise the background radiation.
Small amount of radioactive materials go missing and it becomes international news. Things might be pretty good when it comes to nuclear materials safety after all.
Reddit had fun with this story. One guy was posting daily images of a small metal capsule he'd found, wondering what it was. Everyday the image deteriorated a bit, and he described feeling sicker.
Comments were along the lines of "your passion for collecting is truly radiant".
I mean nuclear materials safety is top notch, for various reasons - including national security, as the material can be used to create a dirty bomb.
The problem of disposal is political; nobody wants a nuclear waste storage bunker in their back yard. In the US, this has caused every nuclear power plant to have their own growing stockpile of nuclear waste - much more than they should have at any given time [0].
This comment was just from things I've read over time; I didn't realize the US actually has a $44B stockpile budget to build a nuclear waste disposal site, built up since the 80's.
This is what a nuclear waste storage might look like: [1]
I wonder what lessons learned and mitigations will come out of this. My armchair analysis is that there should be a Geiger counter on any vehicle moving radioactive material. I suspect the device had shielding to protect the driver, so an alarm should have gone off when that shielding broke. From that point on the driver was sitting close to an unshielded radiation source and in danger. I'm not an expect, but I suspect they'd want to evacuate the driver from truck at that point, although maybe the distance/timescale was small enough? Secondly, the sudden drop in radioactivity when the capsule left the truck should have triggered an alarm and GPS log. That would have shortened the time to notice the issue, reduced the search area, etc.
> the sudden drop in radioactivity when the capsule left the truck should have triggered an alarm and GPS log
Shouldn't a radioactive source should be shielded when not in use, especially when it's being transported? If so there shouldn't be significant radiation coming from the shielded source inside the truck...
The Geiger counter doesn't have to be in the truck. It can even be integrated with the equipment being carried, so it can raise the alarm no matter where it is, as long as it has battery.
It could even use a low power solid state sensor since the radioactivity is so strong, and when it detects radiation, start dead reckoning until it gets a GPS lock, so you could potentially still get good info with a coin cell level device, although you'd want more, because ideally you'd have a satellite signal.
I wonder if there's any way to use the EPIRB satellites for that, or if the data is too limited to add a "Watch out, there's nuclear stuff here, this isn't a stranded hiker" flag?
Do we have a Gieger Counter Sensor for when the Gieger Counter falls of the truck as well and does that need a Gieger Counter Sensor Sensor? (tongue in cheek).
Seems like a simpler solution would be to prioritise checking some shipments over others at departure and arrival.
My partner works in shipping/logistics and hazardous chemicals/products are treat completely differently to regular bulk cargo.
It actually could work pretty well. A Geiger counter is essentially a current gain device. Ionizing radiation passes through the chamber and excites free electrons which travel towards high voltage plates. The gain comes when the drifting positive ions collide with other gas particles and knock additional electrons free, starting the process again.
Rad source goes missing? Current stops flowing in the GC. HV power failure? Current stops flowing. GC falls out of the vehicle? Current stops flowing.
In any of these cases, you make the system shout an annoying beep that everyone within 250m of the vehicle can hear and somebody checks on it.
Having active monitoring with fail-safes seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to me. A short range battery powered system that continuously reports the presence of the source would seem like a good start.
I think it depends on how much radiation leaks through the shielding and how sensitive the Geiger counter is. I'd expect that the goal of the shielding would be to reduce radiation to safe levels, which may still be high enough to detect. But honestly, I have no idea if that's the case.
Estimating iron ore grade on the fly as recently blasted ore beds are dumped through a load out into train carriages for transport to ocean side processing (further crushing, screening, fine grading and blending) and loading onto shipping.
It's an 800 million tonne per year operation in W.Australia (somewhat larger than the US ~ 48 million tonne iron ore mining figures (IIRC)).
The alternatives are to find something else that can be "shone" like a flashlight through raw iron ore, and | or for the world to consume less steel.
But the world needs more steel. To build more ships. The world needs more ships. To carry more ore and coal. Because the world needs more steel. Also to build buildings.
This whole "economic" growth is just another bubble ready to pop, similar usefull to crypto in the long run.
You'll also see radioactive sources in household smoke alarms on a smaller scale to estimate smoke load in air, and in mineral exploration in downhole detectors mapping density of surrounding materials, in oil and gas measuring the density profiles of fluids as they flow past, etc.
Flashlights are visible light spectrum sources, gamma emitters are similar in function ( Cs-137 emits a 32 KeV x-ray peak and the 662 keV gamma peak ) as they "shine" through materials opaque in the visible spectrum and can be measured after for absorption.
> Those household smoke detectors were in the 80s, the ones sold now are optical.
No, ionization detectors are still around. They're better for detecting flame fires than optical. Think of when you've seen a campfire and there's been little smoke. There was definitely a fire, but an optical detector wouldn't have detected it.
In contrast, optical is better for smoking fires. Best practice is to have some of each. In fact, I believe some models have both in the same unit.
Another PSA: while you're replacing your old smoke detectors, if you have combustion heat, consider replacing some of them with ones that also detect CO. (You'll have to replace them in 5-7years, though.)
I’ve used troxler portable nuclear soil density readers when I was a civil engineer doing site inspections.
I’m assuming it’s something similar.
Fairly safe. I had a radiation badge which never showed anything. We know the badges worked because someone stored the badge with the nuclear device which caused them to be quite alarmed when that test came back. Keeping distance reduces exposure.
We had to have paperwork from the US regularitiry commission to transport it from site back to office. I remember it was stored in a giant orange box which we tied down in the back of our truck.
Looking it seems like new models are designed not to need that.
>> Its loss sparked an unprecedented public safety warning over 1,400km […] a search vehicle was driving past at 70 kilometres per hour on the Great Northern Highway when a detection device revealed radiation. […] 20 metre "hot zone" has been set up around the capsule to ensure the public's safety.
Why did it take 5-days to find it? Even just two vehicles driving from either start or end of the path should have covered the path in 10-hours; based on the actual location, it should have been found in 3-4 hours.
If we had vehicles at either end of the path already configured for positional radiation detection, sure. To determine what needs to happen could have taken a day or more, then a couple of days or more to get the equipment/expertise/calibration done.
You're acting like a very specialized operation is some day-to-day occurrence that they should have rolling stock and experts ready to go at a moments notice. That has no basis in reality.
A Bugatti Chiron Super Sport has a top speed of 490 km/h.
Have one start at each end of the road and meet at the middle.
One and half hours, tops (actually a little more to allow for refuelling).
Boom, problem solved.
Yes, but a bit overblown. They left out the part where the needle was glowing with highly penetrating radiation, 1000 times brighter than the hay, and everything - needle and haystack - was spread out along a known path. It looks like they did a great job, but for a crew with the right equipment, the capsule wasn't very well hidden.
“Literally” has been abused for emphasis for centuries, apparently:
… yet the wretch, absorbed in his victuals, and naturally of an unutterable dullness, did not make a single remark during dinner, whereas I literally blazed with wit. - William Makepeace Thackeray, Punch, 30 Oct. 1847
> The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, this morning joined those disappointed to learn the maximum penalty for mishandling radioactive material in such a manner was $1,000.
Sincere question. In this particular case, wouldn’t a minimal fine tend to be in everyone’s best interest? Make it Draconian and the company has more motivation to cover it up, right?
Good. Now fine the company 3x the cost of the recovery operation, and require them to carry these things in locked Pelican cases with a satellite GPS tracker with at least 7 days' battery life.
I don’t understand how one capsule of that size could fall off a truck without coming with a lot of other stuff too. What was the cargo configuration of this transport?
The official explanation so far is that the capsule was secured in its holding device which in turn was in a box secured on a pallet. The device was shaken apart by road vibration, and likewise one of the four bolts holding the box to the pallet was shaken out. The capsule bounced through the bolt hole, off the back of the truck and onto the roadside.
I think we'll have to wait until the Australian authorities finish an investigation to find out whether that improbable sequence of events is what happened, or whether Rio Tinto put a badly damaged, disassembled detector assembly into a box, did a poor job of securing the box, and THEN the part bounced out from road vibration. Given where it was found, though, I think we can be reasonably certain the last part is true.
I assume the capsule was in some large equipment in a chamber, and the chamber wasn't closed properly, and it rattled its way out, bumped off the truck onto the road, and was kicked to the side either by that truck or some other vehicle.
Yes, that's basically exactly what happened. I'm not digging up the previous piece I read (sorry), so I may be slightly misstating this, but basically the capsule was inside a sensor which was inside a wooden box bolted to the bed of the truck. On the 1600km of rough roads, the sensor vibrated to pieces, the capsule fell out, one of the bolts holding the box down also vibrated free, and the capsule fell down through the bolt hole. Pretty crazy.
It reminds me of this experience I occasionally have where something in my home gets lost in the least believable of ways, so we’re hunting for something we’ll never find. One of my kids favourite hats got lost and we looked everywhere including at school. Found it in a Halloween storage bin in the attic. Still no clue what series of events led to that.
My best one like that is my dad lost his glasses, and they turned up a few days later in the woodchute window - an opening from the outside to the basement of my parents' old farm house for tossing firewood through - which had not been used during the period the glasses were missing and was covered over.
I am sad to inform you that you have no future as a supervillain.
With a radiation source like this even a dust sized particle, if ingested or inhaled, is enough to cause excruciating death. Anything that turns the capsule into a powder and releases it into the air near a large group of people or into a water source or even a public pool could cause mass fatalities.
Mass fatalities, no. Source: I have worked in Chernobyl.
But anyway that's a way better suggestion because you can split one source into a vast multitude of opportunities to slit into someone's pillow. So excruciating death it is.
iirc the comments from the previous articles on this topic, then yes. storing the capsule a few meters away for extended periods of time will cause leukemia - a lot faster than smoke will cause lung cancer.
Radiation-poison people? There's not enough material, even if it was Uranium or Plutonium to make any sort of bomb IIRC, you need kilos for that not, (micro)grams.
I think that's probably the biggest risk - you could just plant it somewhere where it wouldn't be found for a while, giving everyone around it major radiation sickness.
Wikipedia doesn't say that, but it was given as a rate at one meter away. If you were to hold it in your hand or put it in your pocket, you'd give yourself radiation burns pretty much instantly. Imagine sticking this under(or even inside, it doesn't matter with gamma) a politician's desk where they sit for a few hours a day - at the beginning they wouldn't feel much, but after just one day the burns they suffer would be enormous.
Imagine if some aboriginals found it and tried to make jewellery out of it. Probably not unlikely, seeing that it's a heavy metal object that can be drilled so that you can attach a necklace. The wearer would be in deep trouble.
> The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, this morning joined those disappointed to learn the maximum penalty for mishandling radioactive material in such a manner was $1,000.
Occam's razor suggests that the fine was put into law, then inflation happened and no one bothered to increase the fine.
The only mildly strange thing about it is that such a check should take like 10 seconds and this article was apparently written after the capsule was found, but before the result of the check was announced.
But the serial number check itself is an obvious thing to do and it doesn't necessarily imply they believe there are more of the capsules missing.
It's going to take a bit longer than 10 secobds to safely get close enough to such a strong radiation source as to take a clear picture or read a number.
It's not that strong of a source. You wouldn't want to go about your day with it in your pocket, but last I read a 1m exposure for an hour was a few x-rays worth of radiation. Take out your phone and zoom in.
And since they knew they were looking for radioactive material, I would hazard a guess that they already have necessary protection.
The article was updated to say the serial number was confirmed, it took about three hours after the news first broke. Seems fair, probably took that long for the Australian Defense Force to get to the capsule.
Because the output pulse from a Geiger–Müller tube is always of the same magnitude (regardless of the energy of the incident radiation), the tube cannot differentiate between radiation types.
No "signature" detection possible with simple counters I'm afraid.
They used trucks on the road with large doped sodium iodide crystal pack (tubes with a scintallation (flash) detector at the ends) that produce a second by second full spectrum of gamm energies seen.
Processing software is used to filter out cosmic radiation signatures, the ground vehicle signatures, the mean expected background signature of the Western Australian region, and to enhance the target peaks from the Cs-137 source.
You'd think that was quick, ... but generally this kind of thing would be done from a crop duster airframe flying at an industry standard 70m/sec (252 km/hr).
I'm guessing the local Perth geophysical survey companies that routinely fly magnetics and radiometrics were all fully engaged flying pre booked contract work .. so they dragged in a couple of white transit vans and fitted them out to get the job done.
Seems straightforward enough in the geophysical instrumentation domain.
Exotic? Radiometric mapping has been around for 50+ years - Australia has mapped the entire country (size of mainland contiguous USofA) from aircraft with ~200m line spacing in that time (along with surveying other countries, Mali, Fiji, India|Pakistan border, elsewhere), Russia, South Africa, Finland, USofA also have radiometric survey teams.
It's handy for finding drums of radioactive waste in a Finnish forrest near the Russia border, for example, which was an actual contest | exercise some years ago.
Australian civilian radiation services with backing of AGSO (Australian Geological Survey Organisation) are easily able to handle this all within Australia w/out reaching out to the Indians, Pakistani's, Iranians, Russians, South Africans, or other international nuclear agencies.
> It was believed the capsule fell through the gap left by a bolt hole, after the bolt was dislodged when a container collapsed as a result of vibrations during the trip.
You would imagine someone have thought of this failure mode
Someone absolutely did, and wrote controls for it, down to the calibration of the torque wrench.
Just as they thought of the failure modes of:
- cold fluoropolymers in rocket boosters
- graphite moderated water cooled reactors
- live ammunition on movie sets
- insurance products assuming uncorrelated risks in a correlated market
- etc
All of these things were known and controlled risks long before the event that realised them happened.
Only if their job depended on it. For some people, their jobs mostly depend on following orders, official policy & "best-practices". The job reward is not directly related to the organization's or society's desired outcome. Codified rules and "best-practices" cannot cover everything important. Wisdom & truth are ineffable but sometimes people pretend that everything can be codified, but if that were the case, everything can be done with robots and computers.
Okay, sorry, call me cynical but what are the odds Rio Tinto placed a capsule by the side of the road, to walk off with a $1,000 fine, while whoever ripped open the gauge and stole the material is out there planning God-knows-what?
This made me laugh. I was definitely being a bit of a nudge and just free-form conspiracy theorizing. The idea that Rio had to register all their sources never even occurred to me.
- "We have the ability to prosecute under the radiation safety act and we will certainly look at such prosecutions, and we've done that in the past," [Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson] said."
- "The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, this morning joined those disappointed to learn the maximum penalty for mishandling radioactive material in such a manner was $1,000."