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Comment by buildsjets | Hacker News Reader

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Probably a third hand story at this point but what I was told from someone that worked there for a long time is that at one point, the winch that raised the cesium source got jammed in the up position. Obviously this was a problem because no one could approach it. They brought in a marksman who somehow shot the winch or rope or whatever which dropped the source back into it's pig.

I will say that this experiment only exposed the plot of land to radiation, not contaminated it. Unless the source was broken or eroded, there would be no detectable radiation on that land once the source is sealed up.

That's not to say BNL hasn't contaminated the land, it is a Superfund site. They do a lot of medical experiments there (they invented the PET scan) but medical waste hasn't always been disposed of properly like now. They had "glass holes", a hole in the ground where you'd chuck in your contaminated labware.

> the supergeniuses at Brookhaven National Labs decided it would be a good thing

Doing this next to an aquifer was reckless. But doing it at all is just science.

> I grew up on Long Island and I expect that it will eventually kill me

Wouldn't we expect to have solid data on this by now?

Also, "Caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30.04 years" [1]. Less than a quarter of the original sample is still Cs-137. (The rest is mostly naturally-occuring barium.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137

Not OP but I doubt it. I’m in my mid 30s and when I grew up there in the 90s, Suffolk county was bumble. Some people had horses on their land. After 9/11, a ton of people moved in from the city and the population absolutely ballooned. Over two decades, the population grew so much that just Nassau county and Suffolk county combined has more people than a handful of states. People come and go too (including myself) so unless some organization is tracking us, it’ll be hard to pinpoint.

You imply that experiment contaminated drinking, and other, water. How? Are you saying the Cs¹³⁷ leaked, and at concentration above that from fallout, say? Its γ-rays don't activate materials — I've used enough of them.

Aha likewise, I swear, between the ticks and the polluted water, a good amount of us are screwed. Grumman has put some nasty stuff into the ground too. I remember growing up how they mentioned it was slowly seeping into the aquifer. Took me ages to convince my parents to get a RO machine

It may help alleviate your concerns somewhat to know that these scientists weren’t completely irresponsible: Cesium 137 is a gamma emitter, which means that it doesn’t make things around it radioactive (unlike most fissionable elements such as Uranium or Plutonium).

This was mentioned in one of the articles you linked!

And you are proposing that none of the Cesium 137 escaped into the ambient environment during the 19 year exposure period? That is statistically impossible. The source had ha mechanical shutter that allowed it to be directly exposed to the environment for almost 20 years, with no human to maintain it. Corrosion, spalling, and release of radioactive material though freeze-thaw cycles are all ways that bits of the source can become liberated.

Are you also proposing that this was the only experiment that released radionuclides into the environment at BNL? I certainly remember the furor of them getting caught pissing tritium into the groundwater. I am sure there are many, many things they did which were not detected.

https://www.gao.gov/products/rced-98-26

It is well know and well documented that the defense industry has taken a cavalier approach to public nuclear safety from it’s very inception. And make no mistake, BNL exists primarily as a national defense asset.

Gamma rays will cheerfully go right through centimetres (an inch) or so of solid metal, there’s no need to directly expose the Caesium to the environment!

These radiation sources are usually very solid metal containers with their lids welded permanently shut.

Not to mention that these sources usually contain water-soluble salts of caesium. Hence, hermetically sealing the sources is essential, especially for outdoors use.

Oh yes, the Gamma Forest is shown in Brookhaven Spectrum!

Here's what it looked like back in 1967... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsuiLxcDuHY&t=925s

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