MetaFilter posts tagged with radioactive

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)

Japan suffers major earthquake

dejah420 — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 07:36:50 -0800

Strong earthquake hits Japan, hundreds of homes have been destroyed, bridges have been leveled, tsunamis are forming, and most frightening, the nuclear power plant appears to be leaking radioactive water. The quake registered as a 6.8 on the Richter scale. I hope that our Japanese Mefites are safe and sound and will let us know if there is anything we can do to help.

Radioactive Isotopes for sale

mattbucher — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:38:13 -0800

"If you really wanted to poison someone, you would of course have to come up with a way to remove the invisible amount of material from the exempt sources - which is just about physically impossible and combine them together. Of course you would also need that 15,000 exempt sources." You can buy the radioactive material, Polonium-210, that killed a former Russian spy for only $69--but you'd need a lot of it to take down an enemy or two.

WMD's Dumped By Army Off U.S. Coasts

notmtwain — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 19:51:25 -0800

Decades of dumping chemical arms leave a risky legacy The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels. These weapons of mass destruction virtually ring the country, concealed off at least 11 states - six on the East Coast, two on the Gulf Coast, California, Hawaii and Alaska. Few, if any, state officials have been informed of their existence.

Radioactive Material Lost By Halliburton Found In Boston

Postroad — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 10:17:51 -0800

Radioactive Material Lost By Halliburton Found In Boston Shit hapens:: "Halliburton Co. (HAL), an oil services company and major military contractor in Iraq and elsewhere, lost track of a shipment of radioactive material in October but didn't alert the government until this week. Federal authorities mounted an intensive search and found the material Wednesday in Massachusetts.

Ralph Snart Returns!

boost ventilator — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 11:31:43 -0800

The return of Ralph Snart...to the web and to print! This is Marc Hansen's outrageous story of a mild-mannered alcoholic accountant gone completely mental, featuring Dr. Goot (evil scientist and nemesis), Mr. Lizard (thanks to radioactive crickets) and Holly Hornswoggle (evil lab assistant and love interest). It originally ran from 1986 to 1994 and of course there is always the obligatory unofficial site.

Dirty Bombs

Irontom — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:22:13 -0800

Dirty Bombs
Federal investigators have documented 1,300 cases of lost, stolen or abandoned radioactive material inside the United States over the past five years and have concluded there is a significant risk that terrorists could cobble enough together for a dirty bomb. (warning - Salon link)

Operation Enduring Uranium

Bletch — Sun, 29 Jun 2003 16:14:35 -0800

Bizarre results showing elevated levels of NON-depleted uranium in Afghan civilians who showed symptoms of uranium poisoning following Operation Enduring Freedom. "Uranium levels found in the Afghan civilians’ urine are 4-20 times higher than those of a control group and the isotopic signature is that of Non-Depleted Uranium. The only explanations of this finding are either anomalous geological and agricultural conditions (fertilizers) or the presence of uranium extracted from the front-end of the fuel or weapons production cycles. [...] There are no geological, commercial and agricultural phenomena or activities and uses in the environs of the contaminated populations that might explain the contamination." This is very odd. [via wrh; these preliminary results are unpublished but UMRC’s Gulf War Veterans’ studies are in peer-reviewed journals]

Joey Michaels — Mon, 16 Sep 2002 19:15:24 -0800

Radioactive Recycling. "If the Department of Energy has its way, the nation's nuclear garbage could end up in everyday items like bicycles, frying pans, and baby strollers." The East Tennessee Technology Park, was once known as "the K-25 site. Its mission: to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons." Now, efforts are being made to recycle some of the irradiated scrap metal into unlabeled household objects. On the plus side, any radioactive metal that finds its way into your kitchenware won't be headed for Yucca Mountain.