The Nanda Devi mystery – Plutonium lost on India’s second highest mountain | Hacker News Reader

The Nanda Devi mystery – Plutonium lost on India’s second highest mountain

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61 pointsmknits10 comments

As for missing RTG's, it would not be at all surprising if they grew legs.

Maybe not the locals, but I would think most educated modern people, if they found the equipment, would have a large clue what was inside. There are not too many things you can put in a box on an isolated mountain top that would make it stay hot. It's not batteries, and it's not a engine.

In the late sixties, there were a dozen governments that would pay handsomely for such a box.

Yes, but how many people are well educated? The USSR made many similar devices, for powering lighthouses etc, and most of them are rusting away. A number of people have died after trying to steal the casing for scrap.

>Takeda quotes McCarthy: “I saw the sherpas fighting over who got to carry (the SNAP),” adding: “They had no idea of what it was. They’d put the thing in the middle of their tent and huddle around it. I guarantee none of them are alive now.”

I wonder if they themselves knew about the risk involved.

If they fully knew the risks, they would have probably used the device to warm up themselves. The plutonium-238 used in the SNAP devices is notable for not having any significant decay modes other than alpha. So long as the device remains intact, a sheet of paper is sufficient for radiation shielding.

I've always read the outer layers of your skin are sufficient; just avoid ingestion or inhalation and you're fine.

This is a very sloppy and/or fear mongering article, e.g. when it talks about the device being 1/2 the size of the Hiroshima bomb, which was a uranium gun assembly design. It never points out you can't make this isotope of plutonium go boom, or the much fuzzier probability that a breach of the containment wouldn't likely cause a widespread contamination problem.

Reactor-grade plutonium in the headwaters of the Ganges, which supplies millions of people. Probably better if it was stolen than lost.

THE REAL QUESTION OF DESIGN: How much WATTAGE/POWER would a 56kg package of Guru Rinpoche (made of plutonium) be able to generate?

any scientists care to comment?

Curiosity has a battery of 5 kg and it delivers 2 kW thermal and 125 W electric power.

so- if the mountain wasn't magical before, it is now

Did they find it?

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