How not to “respond” to depleted uranium incidents…
February 4th, 2008
|
| Share |
This is a slightly old story, but it has just recently come to my attention. It reminds me a great deal of what happened to the Staten Island man trying to make an honest living selling some common industrial chemicals. It’s also a bit reminiscent of the the incident where Boston went into a state of panic when officials found some LED-Illuminated Mooninites, as well as numerous other.
It seems a Florida couple back in 2006 bought some surplus tools from a NASA government auction. If you can get in on these auctions you can often get some pretty good stuff at a very low price thanks to the US government’s policy of auctioning surplus equipment to the public, often at a very discounted price. All was fine until the couple took one of the tool boxes home. That’s when they found a small chunk of some kind of metal. This is where they made their biggest mistake: They called the state to ask what to do and whether it was dangerous.
A hazmat team was immediate dispatched and identified the material as depleted uranium. Being that it is “uranium.. isn’t that like nuclear or something,” it’s not surprising that within minutes Ranger Danger and the Keystone Cops had evacuated the neighborhood for the rest of the day and confiscated the material on the grounds that it’s “toxic and poses a risk to the public.” None of the news reports indicated whether officials also confiscated the couple’s car battery and any fishing weights, solder, old car fenders, cordless phone batteries, golf clubs or any other materials also containing toxic and dangerous heavy metals. Presumably they didn’t because those are not “OH MY GOD RADIOACTIVE HIROSHIMA TERRORISTS CANCER BOMB MUSHROOM CLOUD CHERNOBYL OMG RUN PANIC!”
One official stated that the couple could have experienced radiation poisoning if they had kept the depleted uranium in their pocket. (Never let the truth get in the way of scoring PR points and trying to justify idiotic government actions.) Now if it had been me finding such an item in a surplus lot I’d probably think “Cool, this is an interesting thing to have. It’s getting hard to find chunks of DU for a reasonable price.” But then again, I already own some (thought not as much.) If you’ll excuse me, there are some men in moon suits and a robot at my door, so I better go see what they want…
This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 11:47 am and is filed under Bad Science, Depleted Cranium, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
February 4th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Hey Duke nuken 3d! I remember that. Great game for it’s time. Heh. yes, this story is absolutely idiotic. If I were one of the cops who responded I’d just ask them if they didn’t want it if I could have it. It’d be a nice conversation piece. Maybe a paperweight or just a desk piece. I’d totally pocket that! (yeah in my pocket too, if it didn’t rip a hole in it)
Quote Comment
February 5th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
I have held a (not yet used) fuel pellet for a CANDU reactor in my hand. Of course that was natural uranium oxide, slightly more radioactive than depleted uranium.
This reminds me of the tale (I don’t know if it’s true) of a truck spilling its load in an accident & the police etc. getting very concerned over the load being listed as a ‘chemical’, & closing off the highway. Apparently the chemical was ‘ferric oxide’.
See also the Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide petition.
Quote Comment
February 6th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Perhaps they should send the homeland security folks response team for depleted uranium to Iraq! Specifically Baghdad were there are numerous 1000s of spent A10 shells in government ministry buildings. Ironically, they just sit there with a background count of 1000+/sec and it’s not a problem there.
Officially, DU is not a problem, nor it’s aerosol from combustion, but ma and pa can’t get a decent chunk on surplus? That’s oxymoronic.
Quote Comment
February 6th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
No it’s really not a problem at all. So are you saying you want to buy some? I have some. I can hook you up if you want but as far as uranium metal, it’s kinda expensive in anything larger than about the size of a couple match sticks. Uranium oxide is easier, but the only good supplier of large samples of DU metal I know is very expensive because they’re sold as an analysis and spectroscopy standard, so they’re extremely precisely made – more so than would be needed for most applications.
I can check though. You can sometimes find it being sold surplus if you look around. How much do ya want?
Quote Comment
February 20th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Seems there are some scientists that do acknowledge a DU risk: http://jnumedmtg.snmjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/47/suppl_1/242P-b
Quote Comment
June 9th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Hi there!
I’d like to buy some uranium metal from you somehow. Perhaps the best shape for my experiments would be thin uranium metal plates or even strips, if possible. But any decent sized pieces would be fine, hopefully in pound quantities. Please do let me know and hear back from you!
amalgumfusion@hotmail.com
Sincerely,
Brian Charles
Quote Comment
June 9th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Hi there!
I’d like to buy some depleted uranium metal from you. The best pieces for my experiments would be plates or strips, but any sized pieces in pound quantities would be fine.
Please do let me know!
amalgumfusion@hotmail.com
Sincerely,
Brian Charles
Quote Comment
June 10th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Brian Charles said:
Okay, I only have several grams on hand, but I’ll see what I can do. It tends to be kinda pricey to buy it outright as a calibration standard, but I’ll check to see what is around because it is often avaliable government surplus. That’s by far the lowest cost way of acquiring it, but it tends to be in odd shapes and sizes.
Quote Comment
August 7th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I have this old Radium Dial Timex Watch. It stopped ticking years ago but it’s still radiating.
I asked Timex if they wanted to do a commercial around it and they denied all plausibility claiming it to be a Shanghai fake. They told me to bury it in a can as some scientists by the name of Curie died from the stuff.
I asked them about alerting authorities and they said if I did I’d get hauled off to Guantanamo.
We know nothing!
Quote Comment
October 4th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Hey brian this is your friend out in california,how do i get a hold of you anyway,805-617-8171
Quote Comment
October 4th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
hey, brian this is your friend out in california, how do i get ahold of you anyway.
Quote Comment