This incident inspired my PhD dissertation on radiation source search. The techniques to search for sources like this are remarkably primitive, even today. My company works on this tech, but it's hard to get traction because the US government basically stopped investing in CBRN technology around when the Cold War ended, and hardly any other countries take it seriously as a threat.
Not that search techniques would have helped stop this incident, they basically didn't even know it was lost until the capsule was already broken and people were dying.
Wow you got you some markov chains, Monte Carlo, Gamma Radiation, what a fun dissertation. I especially liked the bit about how the NaI detector is not a sphere and sensitivity depends on incident angle. I would never have thought of that. You even did a trip to ORNL, how cool is that!
Walking around with a Giger counter while wearing a hazmat suit seems like fun too, but I suppose it would freak people out. This seems like a much more stealthily way to locate a lost source.
Actually, someone walking around with a detector and us localizing in real time is what the current state is. There's been a lot of development since this dissertation to let it run in real time, and to integrate with tactical radiation detectors that the military/police/civil defense teams tend to use. Unfortunately that's mostly unpublished work at present.
This incident inspired my PhD dissertation on radiation source search. The techniques to search for sources like this are remarkably primitive, even today. My company works on this tech, but it's hard to get traction because the US government basically stopped investing in CBRN technology around when the Cold War ended, and hardly any other countries take it seriously as a threat.
Not that search techniques would have helped stop this incident, they basically didn't even know it was lost until the capsule was already broken and people were dying.
Can you share your dissertation with us?
University server seems to be acting up a little bit, I think they just migrated to a new platform but this is the link: https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/items/451b001d-e63a-4968-866...
Wow you got you some markov chains, Monte Carlo, Gamma Radiation, what a fun dissertation. I especially liked the bit about how the NaI detector is not a sphere and sensitivity depends on incident angle. I would never have thought of that. You even did a trip to ORNL, how cool is that!
Walking around with a Giger counter while wearing a hazmat suit seems like fun too, but I suppose it would freak people out. This seems like a much more stealthily way to locate a lost source.
Actually, someone walking around with a detector and us localizing in real time is what the current state is. There's been a lot of development since this dissertation to let it run in real time, and to integrate with tactical radiation detectors that the military/police/civil defense teams tend to use. Unfortunately that's mostly unpublished work at present.
Previous:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609730 - February 2023 (185 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127586 - November 2021 (121 comments)
In 1987, in Brazil, a simple metal capsule left behind in an abandoned hospital triggered one of the worst civilian nuclear accidents in history.
that's pretty much the first sentence of the linked article, no?
When you make a post, I think HN asks you to summarize the article in the comments (or something like that, I haven't submitted anything in a while)