MetaFilter posts tagged with radiation

Fungi are weird

Burhanistan — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:37:12 -0800

Silent spring : Deep in the radioactive bowels of the smashed Chernobyl reactor, a strange new lifeform is blooming.

KABOOM!

Weebot — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:06:11 -0800

Jonathan Golob at Dear Science.org has a series of posts up about nuclear power. Topics include: The physics behind nuclear power, the inner workings of a reactor, nuclear radiation, nuclear waste, the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and the future of nuclear power. Also in a truncated podcast form. Bonus links: Jonathan Golob's columns at The Stranger. And his Top 5 Nuclear Weapons.

It's always a race condition.

enn — Tue, 20 May 2008 07:55:47 -0800

When programmers kill. [pdf] In 1982, Atomic Energy Canada, Limited, introduced the now-infamous Therac-25, a solely software-driven successor to its earlier medical linear accelerators. Six patients received massive amounts of radiation, and three died, before AECL was compelled to supplement the (faulty) software-only error-checking with hardware interlocks to prevent overexposure. "Since the time of the incidents related in this paper, AECL Medical, a division of AECL, was privatized and is now called Theratronics International, Ltd. Currently, the primary business of AECL is the design and installation of nuclear reactors." More from the sci.engr.* FAQ on Failures, Wikipedia.

Toxic Meteorite?

haunted by Leonard Cohen — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 05:58:12 -0800

Meteorite landing confirmed in Peru. Some report illness. Could it be the arrival of the anti-Christ Mabus? Here's what one Doubting Thomas has to say about the whole thing. Some have found it funny.

Saturday Flash fun

boo_radley — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:40:30 -0800

Don't you know that I'm toxic? Toxic has you controlling a clean-suit wearing bomberman across destructible platform mazes in search of glowing green canisters, powerups and enemies to bomb the living bejesus out of. The chiptune soundtrack is pretty nice, too.

Kerr Magee had applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to call their waste an "experimental fertilizer" and just spread it over the top of the land.

mek — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:59:35 -0800

Depleted uranium is now understood to have many medical consequences unique to its modern application as munitions, due to its incendiary, aerosolizing behavior when pulverized. (Rosalie Bertell explains, youtube) It has become a leading candidate for the cause of Gulf War syndrome, and was associated with massive increases in cancer and birth defects in Basra. The EU has called for a moratorium on its use four times, and WHO is deeply concerned with its consequences, but the USA (with Canadian complicity) and Russia continue to use it in Iraq and elsewhere. (prev: 1 2 3 4 5)

Chernobyl, 20 Years Later

dbarefoot — Sun, 27 May 2007 13:50:35 -0800

A striking essay with photos documenting a visit to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Mark Resnicoff, a database programmer and amateur photographer, visited Chernobyl and took a schwack of atmospheric photos. This reminded me of a set of slightly-controversial Chernobyl photos from 2004. Wikipedia provides a little context on KiddofSpeed, the photographer in question with an awesome Engrishesque nickname.

Undark and the Radium Girls

jonson — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 22:03:15 -0800

Undark and the Radium Girls is the fascinating true story of several female employees of the US Radium Corporation at the turn of the 20th Centry. The women were employed to paint radioactive "Undark", a glow-in-the-dark paint for military application (dials that needed to be seen at night, etc) onto the machinery. The women were given lethal amounts of paint & fine brushes, which they all routinely kept sharp by wetting the tips in their mouths. Twenty years later, as their jawbones disintegrated & the tumors began to spread, they started down the path to figuring out who had murdered them, and how.

Leetso

homunculus — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 01:27:31 -0800

Blighted Homeland. "From 1944 to 1986, 3.9 million tons of uranium ore were dug and blasted from Navajo soil, nearly all of it for America's atomic arsenal. Navajos inhaled radioactive dust, drank contaminated water and built homes using rock from the mines and mills. Many of the dangers persist to this day." A series of articles and photo galleries examines the legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo (previously discussed here.) [Via Gristmill, BugMeNot.]

All boom, no alpha

Artw — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 14:10:14 -0800

Air samples over North Korea show no radiation "It is possible there was no radiological data. That could be the case if: the North Koreans successfully sealed the site; it was such a small detonation and so deep underground there was no escape of nuclear debris; or the test was actually conventional explosives."