The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!
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Grand Canyon tourists exposed for years to radiation in museum building, safety manager says
Elston Stephenson, safety manager at Grand Canyon National Park, says thousands were unknowingly exposed to unsafe radiation for nearly two decades.
Some tasty bits for the tldr crown:
For nearly two decades at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, tourists, employees, and children on tours passed by three paint buckets [filled with uranium ore] stored in the national park's museum collection building, unaware that they were being exposed to radiation.
The uranium specimens had been in a basement at park headquarters for decades, and were moved to the [ Museum Collections Building (2C)] when it opened, around 2000.
The containers were stored next to a taxidermy exhibit, where children on tours sometimes stopped for presentations, sitting next to uranium for 30 minutes or more.
The uranium threat was discovered in March 2018 by the teenage son of a park employee who happened to be a Geiger counter enthusiast, and brought a device to the museum collection room.
[eventually technicians came to take away the buckets] Lacking protective clothing, they purchased dish-washing and gardening gloves, and then used a broken mop handle to lift the buckets into a truck
But my favorite part that mushrooms this whole thing into WTF territory:
Stephenson said they detected a low-level site within the building and traced it to the three buckets, which Park Service technicians had inexplicably returned to the building after dumping their contents.
THEY BROUGHT BACK THE GODDAMN PAINT BUCKETS!!!
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Something really doesn't add up. Buckets became dangerously radioactive after being used to store uranium ore? Uranium ore is so low on radioactivity that it's not really worth even thinking about.
http://talknuclear.ca/2014/08/just-how-radioactive-is-uranium-ore/
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@mott555 said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
Buckets became dangerously radioactive after being used to store uranium ore?
Noticeably radioactive, not dangerously radioactive.
But regardless of the level, they could have just left the buckets in the dump mine rather than bring them back. "Hey, you wanna re-use these buckets? You could, like, brine a turkey in it or something?"
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@Lorne-Kates said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
Noticeably radioactive, not dangerously radioactive.
Well the article mentions this:
Stephenson said the containers were stored next to a taxidermy exhibit, where children on tours sometimes stopped for presentations, sitting next to uranium for 30 minutes or more. By his calculation, those children could have received radiation dosages in excess of federal safety standards within three seconds, and adults could have suffered dangerous exposure in less than a half-minute.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission measures radiation contamination in millisieverts per hour or per year. According to Stephenson, close exposures to the uranium buckets could have exposed adults to 400 times the health limit — and children to 4,000 times what is considered safe.
Which seems impossible. I wonder if someone somewhere used the stats for the wrong radioactive element when writing this article.
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@mott555 There are readings later on, from which the "400x" comes from contact with the ore itself.
Outside of the bucket is less (140x for adults).
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There was a geology display at my university with a good-sized chunk of pitchblend. It was in a glass display case, but you could get within inches of it and there were no radiation warning signs or anything anywhere. I have no idea how the numbers play out, but I'm sure that well-labelled and prominently-displayed rock got a lot more close-proximity attention from curious people than an unknown bucket just sitting off to the side somewhere.
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@mott555 said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
Which seems impossible. I wonder if someone somewhere used the stats for the wrong radioactive element when writing this article.
Maybe the buckets were full of bananas.
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@boomzilla said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
@mott555 said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
Which seems impossible. I wonder if someone somewhere used the stats for the wrong radioactive element when writing this article.
Maybe the buckets were full of bananas.
Or spinach.
Filed under: no wait, that was iron
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@topspin said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
Filed under: no wait, that was iron
Isn't that like rain on your wedding day?
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@mott555 said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
@Lorne-Kates said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
Noticeably radioactive, not dangerously radioactive.
Well the article mentions this:
Stephenson said the containers were stored next to a taxidermy exhibit, where children on tours sometimes stopped for presentations, sitting next to uranium for 30 minutes or more. By his calculation, those children could have received radiation dosages in excess of federal safety standards within three seconds, and adults could have suffered dangerous exposure in less than a half-minute.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission measures radiation contamination in millisieverts per hour or per year. According to Stephenson, close exposures to the uranium buckets could have exposed adults to 400 times the health limit — and children to 4,000 times what is considered safe.
Which seems impossible. I wonder if someone somewhere used the stats for the wrong radioactive element when writing this article.
I kicked the article over to my buddy who works in nuclear diplomacy (his background is in nuclear safety). Soon as he's off work he'll read it and give me the "this is a stupid overreaction" or "what the fuck" distillation.
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@Lorne-Kates said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
@mott555 said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
Buckets became dangerously radioactive after being used to store uranium ore?
Noticeably radioactive, not dangerously radioactive.
But regardless of the level, they could have just left the buckets in the dump mine rather than bring them back. "Hey, you wanna re-use these buckets? You could, like, brine a turkey in it or something?"
They didn't want to litter.
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@boomzilla said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
@mott555 said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
Which seems impossible. I wonder if someone somewhere used the stats for the wrong radioactive element when writing this article.
Maybe the buckets were full of bananas.
Bananas that were flown in.
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@Lorne-Kates said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
But regardless of the level, they could have just left the buckets in the dump mine rather than bring them back. "Hey, you wanna re-use these buckets? You could, like, brine a turkey in it or something?"
If they throw the buckets away, you bitch about government waste. If they bring the buckets back, you bitch about that.
You people are never happy.
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@El_Heffe said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
You people are never happy.
That's not true.
We're happy while we bitch
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@TimeBandit said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
@El_Heffe said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
You people are never happy.
That's not true.
We're happy while we bitchAnd I'm (moderately) happy with my bitches! Everyone wins!
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@Weng said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
@mott555 said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
@Lorne-Kates said in The Grand Canyon is a hot spot for tourists!:
Noticeably radioactive, not dangerously radioactive.
Well the article mentions this:
Stephenson said the containers were stored next to a taxidermy exhibit, where children on tours sometimes stopped for presentations, sitting next to uranium for 30 minutes or more. By his calculation, those children could have received radiation dosages in excess of federal safety standards within three seconds, and adults could have suffered dangerous exposure in less than a half-minute.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission measures radiation contamination in millisieverts per hour or per year. According to Stephenson, close exposures to the uranium buckets could have exposed adults to 400 times the health limit — and children to 4,000 times what is considered safe.
Which seems impossible. I wonder if someone somewhere used the stats for the wrong radioactive element when writing this article.
I kicked the article over to my buddy who works in nuclear diplomacy (his background is in nuclear safety). Soon as he's off work he'll read it and give me the "this is a stupid overreaction" or "what the fuck" distillation.
"From a hazard standpoint this is a stupid overreaction and all the figures in the article are just wrong. I anticipate I'll be wearing my safety hat and dealing with it within the next 24 hours. I also wouldn't be surprised if we're cleaning up that damned mine now because someone threw rocks into it and contaminated it"
