Kramatorsk Radiological Accident | Hacker News Reader

Kramatorsk Radiological Accident

en.wikipedia.org

60 pointsexizt8813 comments

The search for the capsule was unsuccessful and ended after a week.

A vastly different response than this recent accident in which they did not give up after a week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34607423

would a geiger counter have been useful here, and if not would anything?

About 94.6% of caesium-137 decays by beta emission, so any Geiger counter would have shown abnormally high readings.

Would they not have been effectively blocked by the concrete wall the capsule was embedded in?

Depends on the position of the capsule in the wall. Also, this was in a 5-storey building, where load bearing walls are between 12 and 20cm.

If there was enough beta radiation to cause leukemia, there was enough for the Geiger counter.

Considering how common radiation sources are in Chinese gadgets (some even containing radioactive materials in loose powder form), a dosimeter or a geiger counter is mandatory safety equipment when moving house.

What kind of gadgets?

All kinds of ”energy healing devices” from underpants with metal capsules sewn in the fabric to ball point pens with loose powder inside.

There are some amulet-like things that could be used for detector testings, they were freely available on aliexpress a few years ago. Also there are some radioactive "trithium" keychains that may contain absolutely anything but tritium.

Sorry, what?

What types of "gadgets" specifically? Why would there be radiation sources in them? Why would they be in powder form? And why from China specifically?

This is not any kind of common knowledge. Can you point to sources for this? Who considers this "mandatory safety equipment"?

"Negative ion generators". Check out Thought Emporium. He managed to have some of them banned.

Specifically the bizarre pseudoscience ones, not the electrical ones used to electrostatically remove particulates from air (and sometimes add ozone into the bargain).

If anything it's impressive that the purveyors of such bracelets and other things would go to the bother of including radioactive material in the first place. They could have just put some ground quartz (i.e. sand) in it and said it was "crystals". No one was going to check, and even if they did, and you couldn't fob then off by saying their test was invalid, like the Batteriser guy tried to do, what would they do about it? Leave you a bad review on Amazon before you rebrand as Engrokoo or something and pop up as a new name?

I understand it may seem confusing. These ”energy healing devices” are a very real danger when people unknowingly order them online and their kids take them apart.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com