Re: Plutonium on Next Atlas V - Bad Idea?

In article <43043c85.8849355@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Derek Lyons <fairwater@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>...the only metal
>>they can use to make certain geiger counters with comes from salvage
>>from pre-1945 - all other metal is now mildly contaminated
>
>Again, only half the story.
>Those 'certain geiger counters' are a fairly small number of extremely
>sensitive devices used for medical research.

It goes a bit farther than that. Battleship armor plate, for example, is
quite sought after as shielding for precision radioisotope-measurement
facilities -- used for a wide range of research -- because it was smelted
before the arrival of atmospheric fallout.

(The real prize in that department, though, was a cargo of lead ingots
salvaged from a sunken Roman cargo ship in the Mediterranean -- not only
did it pre-date atmospheric fallout, but it had been largely shielded from
cosmic rays for a couple of millennia. If memory serves, the big Italian
particle-physics lab financed the archaeological expedition in return for
getting most of the lead.)

Derek is correct, though, that this sort of thing matters only to people
doing very sensitive measurements. Things weren't looking good for a
while in the mid-late 1950s, when both superpowers were enthusiastically
testing large hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere, but since they soon
stopped, the problem has become a very minor one. Just choosing where you
live is a bigger factor in radiation dose -- for example, Denver is
noticeably worse than a sea-level location, except if the sea-level site
is in a monazite region (where the soil has significant thorium content).
--
No, the devil isn't in the details. | Henry Spencer
The devil is in the *assumptions*. | henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

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