Last week I got to play around with dangerous radiation, which was fun. But what was even better was talking to the people who work with the radiation. Apparently the Swiss government has a radiation "SWAT" team. I talked with a guy who was on the team about what they did, and he told me some crazy tales.
He said that he was routinely called to construction sites to deal with radiation problems. Apparently radioactive materials are commonly used on construction sites, especially in equipment that surveys the ground (sends waves into the ground and reads back the results). Bulldozers will sometimes accidentally drive over this equipment and expose the radiation source(s).
He told me the horror story of a factory worker in Chile who picked up an iridium source. Old factories use radiation sources for a variety of things, including flow meters, density sensors, and heating of all things! The source looked like a pen, and the worker picked it up. He tossed it from hand to hand (because it was so hot), and then put it in his back pocket.
At this point my colleague's story diverges from the internet. According to the IAEA, the worker showed the source to a few other people before some of them started to be sick. According to my colleague, the worker walked into a cafeteria and dosimeters of workers started going crazy.
They flew the worker to a French military hospital and immediately amputated a giant sphere (~10 cm diameter) of flesh from his butt, close to where he had the source. The French doctors used stem cells to treat him, and managed to save his life.
It was pretty fun to shot the breeze with this guy, especially on the subjects of dirty bombs and terrorism. We talked about how the current generation of bomb detectors at the borders was absurd. Shielding a uranium bomb from the border detectors or sneaking a bomb through under a common false alarm condition (hide the bomb in a truck with kitty litter and old electronics like CRTs) are not difficult feats of engineering. We talked about dirty bombs, and whether Cs-137 or Co-60 would make better "dirt".
The crazy part of my work with radiation is that now I feel a lot safer at Delft's nuclear facility than at a random construction site. If something horrible did happen, the people at nuclear facilities have the know-how to clean it up. Also, there are stringent regulations at the nuclear / radiation facilities I have been to.
If you need further proof of safety, just look at the moat at Delft's facility. Sadly the architect couldn't convince the university to spring for the draw-bridge option.
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