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Comment by aio2 | Hacker News Reader

I remember learning that when they started testing atomic bombs (I think?) the nuclear debris in the air spread basically throughout the whole united states and the government tried to keep quiet about it. Something similar will probably happen here if they mess up with the launch.

Btw, the video I saw was on Veritasium.

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I remember that video; the long story short was that a manufacturer of films for photography noticed that their films had spots on them, they initially thought it was defects, but because they had samples prior to testing, they saw an uptick.

But maybe I remember wrong.

Edit: the video in question is [1] and the conpany was Kodak.

[1] https://youtu.be/7pSqk-XV2QM

Not sure about camera film, but there's certainly a need for 'low-background steel' for several applications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

Speaking of, one way we verify old wine is through background radiation!

Sounds like the way Columbo would have caught one of the killers on the show.

It was used in "White-Collar" to create a scam!

The thing to remember about that is that we can measure tiny amounts of radiation very cheaply, and tiny amounts are harmless. In fact we are bathed in a constant, but tiny, background level of radiation all the time. Thousands of nuclear weapons were tested all across the world, in the United States, in the Soviet Union, on Pacific Islands, etc, etc. The radiation from that certainly caused a small uptick in the background level of radiation, but it hasn’t actually harmed people.

The main reason that the US was secretive about it was that nuclear weapons were a secret, not because there was a shameful health problem to hide.

Incidentally, the best way to reduce your exposure to radiation is to move away from the mountains and go live at the beach. Mountains are mostly made of granite, and granite always contains small amounts of uranium and thorium which decay to radon gas. Also, live as far away from coal power plants as possible, those things are horrifying.

Background radiation may be unlikely to give an individual cancer whilst still causing cancer across a population. It just isn't possible to attribute the cause. Surely the same is true of fallout from testing and estimates would back that up. It may not be something we worry about as individuals. But it is something that nasa should worry about.

There have not been thousands of nuclear tests.

"""There have been 2,121 tests done since the first in July 1945, involving 2,476 nuclear devices. As of 1993, worldwide, 520 atmospheric nuclear explosions (including 8 underwater) have been conducted with a total yield of 545 megaton (Mt): 217 Mt from pure fission and 328 Mt from bombs using fusion, while the estimated number of underground nuclear tests conducted in the period from 1957 to 1992 is 1,352 explosions with a total yield of 90 Mt.[1]"""

- from opening paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests

[1] https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-3-662-03610-5_17

The atmospheric tests are the only ones that matter in this context.

Depends on the details; in water, too close to ground water, near ground level and breaching the surface (Operation Plumbbob), and I don't have numbers for those.

But still, thousands of bombs were in fact tested, and the context here is testing a reactor that won't be on Earth at all via a diversion into "we can detect really small levels of radiation".

Background radiation is categorically different than ingesting/inhaling radioactive substances with the latter many orders of magnitude more dangerous.

The claim, nuclear testing related increases in radiation exposure not being relevant for public health is probably false. There are only very few studies with dubious reliability. The lifetime increase due to that nuclear testing is estimated to be 4.4 Millisieverts. It would have risen continuously with more surface tests, which got abolished accordingly.

The idea, beaches were a sanctum against radiation is wrong again. Sand is ground down mountains in case you wondered. Some are highly radioactive. But of course, UV light is harmful radiation as well.

We eat bananas all of the time. Bananas are delicious and nutritious, and they are known for containing lots of potassium. Well, some of that potassium is radioactive! It’s not very much radioactivity though. It is an amount which is easily measured, but which is not harmful enough to make eating bananas dangerous. This is true even though the potassium will be used to strengthen your bones and teeth. It will also be distributed to your muscles, red blood cells, skin, etc, etc.

There's a difference between a lump of uranium metal falling back to earth and a lump of uranium that's been turned into plasma.

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