Re: 2000 curies of Ci

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 10:54 AM 10/29/04 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
>At 09:19 PM 10/28/2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>>Perhaps you meant Cs-137.  Halliburton loses mCi of Am-241 etc
monthly.
>
>MilliCuries?  That's a bit surprising,
>though losing microCuries of it would be more likely.
>An average home smoke detector has 1-5 microcuries,
>and industrial detectors go up to 15, according to
>one or two articles on the web which may be outdated.
>So you're saying they lose hundreds to thousands of
>smoke detectors a month?

They lose the neutron sources used for well logging.
They contain mCi amounts of Am241 and other hot
'topes.  They use a reaction with Be to produce neutrons
from alphas, like the early nukebomb initiators.

More often, soil-density gauges are lost/stolen from
road crews.  They also have fractional Ci amounts of
RDD-able topes.  But they're very useful; fairly sturdy;
acceptable risk.

See
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2004/
and read a few days' reports.

Re: 2000 curies of Ci

[Bill Stewart]

At 09:19 PM 10/28/2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Perhaps you meant Cs-137.  Halliburton loses mCi of Am-241 etc monthly.
MilliCuries?  That's a bit surprising,
though losing microCuries of it would be more likely.
An average home smoke detector has 1-5 microcuries,
and industrial detectors go up to 15, according to
one or two articles on the web which may be outdated.
So you're saying they lose hundreds to thousands of
smoke detectors a month?


Bill Stewart  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 

2000 curies of Ci

[Major Variola (ret)]

t 10:21 PM 10/24/04 -0500, J.A. Terranson wrote:

>This is idiotic.  You're claiming that the definition of "terrorist" is

>dependent not on the act, but on why the act was committed.  So if I
was
>to go out tomorrow and spread 2000 curies of Ci into the local subway
>system "As payback for Ruby Ridge", this would not be an act of
terrorism?

Just for correctness' sake, there is no element named "Ci", its an
abbrev
for Curies, ie the activity of a gram of Ra.

Perhaps you meant Cs-137.  Halliburton loses mCi of Am-241 etc
monthly.