> a geiger counter will do nothing to reduce your nervousness, in fact it might > even make it worse, for no real good reason. > > Quite true. I have a Geiger counter, and was working on a difficult project at work and kept getting interrupted. I brought my counter into work and just left it on my desk, clicking at the usual background radiation. It made people really nervous and they pretty much left me alone.
One time, I was taking a trip to Mexico to do some shopping, and brought it with me, just in case there might still be some Fiesta ware out there. TSA searched my luggage every single time while it was there. As for radioactive equipment, I used to work for a firm that built monitoring gear for nuclear testing. In one test, the tunnel collapsed, crushing our equipment enclosure. A couple of years later, we got a call, saying our gear had been excavated, but it was full of probably-radioactive dust and partly crushed, asking if we still wanted it. We declined, but I assume some gear like that surfaces at equipment auctions occasionally. Maybe I should bring my counter to hamfests? I had a pet that was treated with iodine-131 for hyperthyroidism once. I was told to discard any bedding after a week, because it would "become radioactive". I-131 is a beta emitter, and beta rays (which are just electrons) can't make things radioactive, it takes neutrons to do that. The only real dangers are excreted I-131 and, if the betas are energetic enough, and I use materials of high atomic weight as bedding, they could produce X rays. > Welcome to the fascinating world of radiation, known by little and feared by > most, for no good reason. More people have been killed by fear of radiation > than by radiation itself. > > Truth. - John -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/7EE0BE0C-DE10-4FE1-9374-DFACEF00FCF7%40mac.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
