Halliburton misplaces mystery radioactive device: ‘Do not handle’
(Photo: Texas Department of State Health Services)
Somewhere in West Texas is a 7-inch radioactive cylinder that Halliburton would like to find. Anyone who comes across it is advised to keep their distance.
“It’s not something that produces radiation in an extremely dangerous form,” said Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services. “But it’s best for people to stay back, 20 or 25 feet.”
Not the sort of thing you’d expect to find laying around, to be sure.
See the red spots? You know, the ones surrounded by blue and green? Those represent 10 sieverts per hour of radiation. That is extremely high and could lead to death within seconds. And at the Fukushima site, that’s what they’re apparently still dealing with … mind you, five months after the fact. “Radiation leakage at the plant may have been contained or slowed but it has not been sealed off completely,” noted Osaka University professor and nuclear engineering expert Kenji Sumita. ”The utility is likely to continue finding these spots of high radiation.” To put this in perspective, add three zeros to the number 10, to make it 10,000 millisieverts per hour (mSv). Then, take a look at this graphic. Yeah. Scary as hell, right? We’ll say. source
Report: Hospitals giving out unnecessary double-CT scans: Fun fact about CT scans: They cost lots of money. Also, a chest CT scan has as much radiation as 350 chest X-rays. So why are some hospitals giving them to patients twice? source
oldmanyellsatcloud said: This story sounds…familiar. Quick google foo brought up this old transcript. transcripts.cnn.com/TRA… Weird. Any link to the actual WHO study? only found this: who.int/mediace…
» SFB says: This is new. Engadget has a press release if you’re curious. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a WHO-affiliated group, made the specific report. If anything else, this certainly makes things more interesting.
Key quote: “They say the worst case is when you don’t have anything to bury or cremate, that’s why the surviving family members are desperate.”
» The flow has continued at a seemingly unchanged rate. This is bad news for pretty obvious reasons- the leak, coming through an eight-inch crack in a pit containing power cables, is sending water irradiated at 1000 millisieverts per hour into the ocean. Having tried pumping in concrete and failed to make any progress, TEPCO’s next plan is to employ a similar strategy using a type of polymer. Polymer spraying has already been happening throughout the plant, in an effort to prevent radioactive isotopes from escaping into the environment.
swagandpassion asks: I plan on going on a study abroad program to China [Beijing] this May...will radiation be an issue?
» We say: Honestly, it shouldn’t be. Really, it’s only an issue within a 20 km radius, and only trace amounts of radiation have been found outside of Japan.
EDIT: According to the article, they’re working on getting an accurate reading again. They just know it’s not 1,000 millisieverts per hour, or 10 million times its normal level. Once we hear what it is, we’ll post.
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
Congrats Tumblr!
Don’t screw this up Yahoo.
In 2007, I was...
I started tumblr when I was at one of the lowest points of...
According to VOA, the U.S. government (along with a drug firm named Onconova) is currently working on an anti-radiation drug called Ex-Rad. “Ex-Rad is a drug which is effective in saving a cell damaged by radiation,” says Onconova CEO Ramesh Kumar, “and we have found that it can be given in advance of exposure to radiation up to a day ahead or it can be given up to a day after the exposure to radiation.” If this is true, it’s worth keeping an eye on. source
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