America’s Worst Nuclear Disaster Was in California. Who Knew? 10

[RoopinderTara]

I was quite surprised to find out that the Santa Susana Field Lab, 35 miles from the center of Los Angeles, was the scene of partial core meltown in 1959. More radition was released there than Three Mile Island, over 900X according to one worst case analysis. A friend of mine, an engineer, told me about it. He is not one to believe in conspiracy theories so I checked it out. I read many accounts, looked at internal memos, listed to local broadcasts from investigative news teams, talked to people who lived nearby, too. Amazed how so few people have heard about it. Boeing owns the site now and denies that it is dangerous. Real estate agents sell houses less than 2 miles from the failed nuclear reactor. It is mind boggling. I wrote an article about it on engineering.com. I am very interested in what engineers in this forum have to say about it. If you have first hand knowledge about it or lived in the area I would very much appreciate hearing your story.

https://www.engineering.com/BIM/Art...lear-Disaster-Was-in-California-Who-Knew.aspx

Roopinder Tara
Director of Content
ENGINEERING.com

 

[dgallup]

I didn't make black powder and nitro until I was in high school. Slow learner.

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[oldfieldguy]

In 1967 I was taking high school chemistry under a particularly adventurous teacher who tickled my curiosity.

I walked into the local chemical supply house and purchased concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids in quart quantities, along with a half pound of iodine crystals and a gallon of 50% ammonia solution. No questions were asked, no eyebrows raised, no background checks. Plunk down the cash and walk out.

Nothing radioactive, but the stuff of many a curious experiment.

old field guy

 

[dik]

OFG:
I was in grade school and I kept having my dad write notes to Mr.Borthistle, the druggist... for stuff. Finally my dad relented and wrote him a note giving me a carte blanche...

Dik

 

[dik]

3DD: "A major problem was that he'd already received a life-time exposure to radiation and therefore was blocked from working in the field. He may have had other problems, but alcoholism finished him off."

That's a shame... I would have thought the kid had great potential...

Dik

 

[dgallup]

OFG - Lots of fun was had with that combination of chemicals.

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[dik]

I seem to recall 'barking dog' with other stuff...

Dik

 

[electricpete]

I walked into the local chemical supply house and purchased concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids in quart quantities, along with a half pound of iodine crystals and a gallon of 50% ammonia solution. No questions were asked, no eyebrows raised, no background checks. Plunk down the cash and walk out.

Making ammonium triiodide, by any chance? I've had some fun with that myself.

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(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[1503-44]

By chance I posted this in Petroleum Production a couple of days ago, and as it also concerns radiation exposure, I add it here in case there are a few of you interested in alternative supplies ???

https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=465745

Genius, maybe not so much, but certainly tenacity and perserverence come to mind.

Start up vs. turn on. I get it, but it is interesting to think about the languistics. I started up my car today, but I think when I buy a Tesela, I will have to turn it on. Neither will take more effort than rotating an ignition, or a "starter" switch, pushing a button or presenting a key code of some kind. Will I also start up my electric personal drone, or simply say "Alexa! Drone On!" So what items need to be started up as opposed to being turned on? Will Alexa know the difference? Sorry, went over the fence.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

My father was a Phd health physicists and did a fair bit of consultancy work in the North Sea/Scotland with scale.

Lost count over the years of the number of surprises he brought home that were issues.

Still remember him getting a ltr of raw still wash from every distillery in Scotland after Chernobyl fall out hit Scotland. I think he needed 10ml per sample to count. Very good for cleaning bicycle gears I seemed to remember. I have never been a huge fan of whisky which I suspect stems from that time.

He had one set of slides which he used for the Offshore rad safety course, they basically paid for myself and sister to go through university and fund her through her Phd.

One item that sticks in my mind was some safety what for a better word could be called buttons. They were for lighting door knobs when the power failed. They were largish alpha sources which normally wouldn't be an issue in the ceiling etc. Just that these were all fitted to door handles and everyone was getting a contact dose when they opened the door. But to be fair they were bloody bright when you wanted to find the door. I saw them again 15 years later in Motels in Florida while doing flight training and used a barrier every time I opened a door with them fitted.

 

[waross]

Ammonium-tri-iodide.
Great stuff. I first made it with tincture of iodine and ammonium hydroxide cleaning solution and a coffee filter.
For those of you who haven't played with this stuff, it is one of the most unstable explosives known.
Paradoxically the instability makes it safe.
It is made wet and does not become explosive until it dries.
Any quantity larger than the head of a wooden match will be triggered into a series of mini explosions by the self contraction caused by the drying.
It would be mixed wet and dabbed on to targets such as doorknobs, light switches, gearshift levers, anything that the intended victim was expected to touch.
Any contact would cause it to decompose with a bang, a flash, a sting to the finger and a purple stain.
Spotted on the floor of a college dorm late at night anyone returning later would wake up the residents with a series of mini explosions.
I never heard of an injury but there were a couple of threats of injury directed towards the perpetrators.
I later moved up to a kit in a small box, about 6"x6"x6".
Inside was a bottle of ammonium hydroxide, a bottle of iodine pellets, a 2" filter funnel and filter papers and a small aspirator pump with a rubber inlet that would fit over most water taps.
I could make a batch in under two minutes.
One time my friends borrowed my kit and did up my bedroom. They used way too much. I got zapped 4 or 5 times but throughout the night I was repeatedly awakened by self detonation of very large blobs as they dried.
One experiment that I heard about but never got around to trying.
It was claimed that if a sugar cube was doped with the stuff and left out during fly time that the impact of a house fly landing on the sugar cube was enough to set it off and kill the fly.
That is believable to anyone who has played with the stuff.
My son recently turned 14. Do I dare tell him about the stuff? No, probably not.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[JohnRBaker]

I lived in a dorm my freshman year and there were a couple of chemistry majors who messed around with ammonium-tri-iodide. They used to sprinkle it on the floor in the hallways of the dorm, and you could hear that stuff go off in the middle of the night when someone was walking to the bathroom/showers. Speaking of bathrooms, they finally cracked-down on this activity when someone decided to spread some of the wet ammonium-tri-iodide onto the black toilet seats. Of course, after it dried, it was undetectable until someone sat down. The resulting burns proved to be quite painful, and after a few late-night calls to the nurses station, the dorm manager threatened to have the perpetrator(s) expelled, if this sort of thing continued. Needless, to say, things got a bit quieter around the place after that.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[dgallup]

We first made it in high school when a classmate with an older brother passed down the wisdom. Nearly got expelled when the vice principle pulled a paper towel out of the dispenser and the rest of the paper towels filled the air. Made small batches in college with plenty of hi-jinx then sophomore year they replaced the old chemistry building with a brand new one. They lined the hallways with chemicals and we students went "shopping". They also left all the labs unlocked. So we mixed up a big batch using all brand new glassware. While rushing to simultaneously rinse the crystals and clean up, we let the filtrate start to dry out. I saw a crack open up in the "mud" and added water and stuck a stirring rod in it. That's when all hell broke loose. A small quantity exploded and blew the remaining crystals all over me and the lab. We cleaned up everything we could and went to dinner as they were about to quit serving. Standing in line nonchalantly while stained head to foot and specs on my clothing exploded, keep moving, nothing to see here!

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[DM61850]

Waross,

I made it when I was growing up but it was pretty expensive at least for what I was paying for iodine.

I wanted to make mercury fulminate but never felt confident playing with mercury.

 

[Sparweb]

I was telling my wife about the breeder-reactor boy scout story. Then she remembered hearing the story of El Cobalto.

A few extracts:
"No one knew the truck was dangerously "hot." From a distance of less than one meter, it emitted 50 rads an hour..."

"...a radiation alarm went off when a delivery truck took a wrong turn near the gates of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico."

"About 600 tons of the contaminated steel were shipped to the U.S. from December 1983 to January 1984."

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[phamENG]

Wow.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Radioactive scrap is a recurring problem.

This paper identifies 28 incidents between 1983 and 1993.
From the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information library

https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20685297

(in case the link does not work, see the attachment).

Most foundries take precautions.

us epa guidance

https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-material-scrap-metal

United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Report on the Improvement of the Management of Radiation Protection Aspects in the Recycling of Metal Scrap 2001.

http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/radiation/docs/report_e.pdf

Fred

 

[3DDave]

I am reminded that wrecked pre-WWII ships are harvested specifically because they are not contaminated with fallout from all the nuclear testing. And there was a program in the US to collect outgrown baby teeth in an effort to discover the rate of radioactive material uptake from cows eating fallout contaminated grass, producing radioactive contaminated milk, which ended up in radioactive baby teeth.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/tooth-fairy-goes-scientific

 

[Comcokid]

Actually, it's the air are we breath that is slightly more radioactive from nuclear testing and accidents. Blast furnace smelting of iron ore uses large quantities of air. As a result new steel is slightly more radioactive than pre-1945 steel. For many nuclear instruments and materials for special physics experiments new steel is unusable. It's more than just steel. Lead ingots salvaged from ancient shipwrecks are valued for shielding. Museums only need a couple for display and research. The rest are a valuable as specialized raw material.

 

[Milliontown]

The El Cobalto reminds me of a somewhat similar modern example. A shipping container was stuck and isolated at a port in Italy because of radioactive scrap. Link

 

[thebard3]

Does anyone have any idea how much that low background steel is worth? I work in a factory that is over 100 years old. There have been several businesses here over the years, and some equipment from previous owners remains here. There are numerous old workbenches with 2-1/2" thick steel tops. Way over designed for workbenches and nobody knows the origin of them. I always wondered if they are pre WWII, or maybe even salvaged from battleships and cruisers when they were scrapped afterwards.

Brad Waybright

It's all okay as long as it's okay.