Attention scrappers! Be careful!!

Me and my son went to the scrapyard this morning, and they checked the entire truck and trailer with a gieger counter before they would even let you on the scale.
 
I caught the tail end of a news report yesterday saying they found the radioactive device. I missed the part on where it was found. The scare is over with, except for those that handled the device.
 
Me and my son went to the scrapyard this morning, and they checked the entire truck and trailer with a gieger counter before they would even let you on the scale.

Being down here in oilfield country, everything that goes into a junk yard is "sniffed" before they will take it. Be susprised what goes down hole comes back "radioactive" in some areas.

I worked for a company that built and rebuilt gas processing equipment. Their policy was anything "used" or claimed "new" did not enter the yard without being sniffed before acceptance. Be susprise at the stuff they turned back! People would get mad, too, for what they though was BS. Some of it was so affected, it could be picked up by a NASA satlelight!
 
A San Antonio tv station reported that it was found on the side of a road in west Texas yesterday evening as I recall. Joe
 
Years ago in the 80's I heard about a guy who found out that he had radioactive scrap yard metal in his home shop. I borrowed a Geiger counter and checked my metal. We have ship yards in this area that build aircraft carriers with nuclear power,and other stuff. It might pay to be careful if you don't know where your found metals have been. I heard back before the radio active metal story that a college here had lost a radioactive source. I don't know if they ever found it.
 
I spent some time in the Navy working with radiation. The advice given here wasn't bad, really, but it's probably more an "abundance of caution" thing. I suppose they're figuring that by the time someone was to identify it as the missing source, they already had enough exposure to warrant moving away. Plus, as I recall, the exposure limits for the "general public" are a lot lower than those allowed for radiation workers, so the permissable exposure times would be a lot lower than for those working with sources professionally, and the recommendations would be... conservative.

But the truly sad part is, of course, is that you can't tell that something like this is radioactive without specialized equipment (unless it's SO radioactive you can see the glow...which is both unlikely and REALLY bad news.) There are nuke worker horror stories about source loss - a guy picking up what he thought was a piece of mislaid equipment and sticking it in his back pocket - really nasty stuff.
 
Nobody's really tracking medical radiation sources very well, especially 'elsewhere'

I wonder just how one would go about loosing track of such a thing?

According to Wikipedia, "The Goiânia accident was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, at Goiânia, in the Brazilian state of Goiás after an old radiotherapy source was stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 were found to have significant levels of radioactive material in or on their body.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] In the cleanup operation, topsoil had to be removed from several sites, and several houses were demolished. All the objects from within those houses were removed and examined.Time magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters" and the International Atomic Energy Agency called it "one of the world's worst radiological incidents".[SUP][3][/SUP][SUP][4]"[/SUP]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
 
Way back when I worked the oil field for a service company (wireline) we had the pigs misplaced a few times. All else quits until they are found. It was a really serious thing.

One actually fell off a truck and was found on the side of the highway.....needless to say the driver no longer was employed.

My badge turned up positive one time and scared the heck out of me. It was a false positive....so they said. I didn't glow in the dark though:thumbsup:
 
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