Grand Canyon tourists exposed for years to radiation in museum building
32 replies, posted
Dang, could had sold the bucket of uranium to other folks
The caesium-137 source inolved in the Goiânia accident had an activity of 74 TBq when first produced in 1971, dropping to 51 TBq by the time of the accident in 1987. You'd need over 2000 tonnes of uranium metal to equal 51 TBq. Not to mention caesium-137 undergoes beta decay either directly into barium-137 or into a metastable isotope of barium-137, which then decays into the ground state, emitting a gamma ray. Gamma rays are far more penetrating than alpha or beta particles, which makes them more dangerous. Of course with uranium you'd have to deal with its decay products as well, especially radon, but this incident is still orders of magnitude less dangerous than the Goiânia one.
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