Sorta OT: radiation detection and identification questions

SDAMs ..modern ones..require tritium IIRC...and periodic recharges of said material.

The arty nukes were somewhere around 10-15kts

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

If it was a dirty bomb in DC, the US economy might be released in to an upsurge :)

Nukalert is availiable for $160, is on 24/7, battery lasts 10 years and reads (audibly) from 0.1 R/hr to 50+ R/hr

Apparently, it did go critical, but was a fizzle: .

The products were detected a few days later by specially-equipped air-sampling aircraft.

What's missing in the above description is the blanket of massive material used to hold the exploding core together long enough for full; yield to develop.

Yes.

One can use smaller loads to test bomb components and calibrate simulation code with the mess and bother of a real nuclear explosion. One reads of such tests being done with natural uranium, which will not explode no matter what.

But if no nuclear reaction, there won't be a big enough explosion to be seismically detected. And no radioactive products for the airplane to pick up a few days later.

The fact that they used plutonium (versus enriched uranium) implies that they must have used an implosion device. The material used is known from the air samples. What appears to have happened was that they didn't achieve sufficient compression and/or sufficiently symmetrical compression.

The best public source I know of on the subject of how nuclear bombs work is the book by Richard Rhoades, "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Do you remember Wen Ho Lee, who was accused of giving nuclear secrets to China? In their defense, the Chinese Government at the time said that their best source was Rhoades' book.

Joe Gwinn

True. But it isn't just the Public that jumps to conclusions.

A good data point came out recently. Remember all the predictions about the consequences of the Chernobyl accident twenty years ago? I just read an article on how the wildlife is faring: "Growing up with Chernobyl", Ronald K. Chesser and Robert J. Baker, American Scientist, November-December 2006, Volume 94, pages 542-549. It's a bit of a mea culpa.

Here is the abstract

Although it has been two decades since the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the biological effects of the radiation released are still being debated. The authors share lessons learned about radiation effects--and about doing science under the hot lights of international environmental politics--over the 15 years that they have been studying how this radiation has affected the wildlife inhabiting the evacuated zone directly around the power plant. At one point they concluded that certain rodents suffered significant genetic rearrangements, but more recent assessments suggest that these animals have not experienced mutations that can be attributed to the nuclear accident. The removal of people has allowed the zone around the reactor to become something of an unintended wildlife preserve.

Joe Gwinn

Which is why any device really needs to be detected before the ship reaches our waters. ERS

Short of sattelite based automated detection. I don't see much likleyhood of that. Too many variables in the directions of intake, and far too much volume of traffic to ever carry out manually.

Scary s*it to spend a lot of time thinking about, scarier to think of all the ways that something like that could be pulled off by other means.

Cheers Trevor Jones

I would like to be able to read a couple of orcers of magnitude below that.

Presumably you want a survey meter, I hope you have $1K ;)

Yes, they are actually much cheaper than that used, I recall a modern Victoreen meter sold for $162 on ebay.

My Victoreen was picked up for $20. No calibration certs though.

Gunner

"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."

- Proverbs 22:3

On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 17:11:44 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, Gunner quickly quoth:

Whaddya need certs for? Isn't half the screen marked "You might live." and the other half "You're gonna die!" ?

- The only reason I would take up exercising is ||

That's the early model. The newer ones say, "Fakin' bacon", and "Makin' bacon". ;-)

Okay, so I'm late and catching up, but Gunner wrote on Sat, 21 Oct 2006 05:33:30 GMT in rec.crafts.metalworking :

I recall reading an interview with a former soviet physicist, analyzing the risks of a dirty bomb attack, on Disneyland. His response was "I'd still go. I would eat or drink nothing while I was there, and dispose of my clothes afterwards, but I would still go." There was a website by a Kievian woman, who took her motorcycle through the dead zone. Took pictures. Same sort of story: stay on the road, eat and drink nothing, no smoking, keep moving. Ah, here is URL:

Most people have no idea what radioactivity is all about, the difference between radiation and radioactivity, and all they know is from bad movies (The China Syndrome, Them, etc.).