Lost Cs-137 capsule in Australia
Posted: 01 Feb 2023, 07:45
Hi folks,
I've read in our local news that a capsule containing Cs-137 was lost in Australia while being transported from a mine.
More can be read here:
[broken link removed - Steven]
One thing that I notice, is that our newspapers always mention that the capsule is very hard to find and probably will never be found. I know this could be overreacting of the media, but it seems that the search is still going on. I've also seen videos of firefighters carrying detectors and walking on the road.
Therefore i wonder, why not use helicopter devices?
Given the 9GBq mentioned in the article, calculated the following:
Assuming the Helicopter flying in the middle of the road, and assuming a diameter of 20m of the road, this would result in 10m of each side of the helicopter. Assuming a flight height of 25m, the maximum distance maximum distance to the source would be around 27m. With 9GBq this would still be a dose of 0.8uSv which is very well detectable.
So I wonder why this is no option / not used in this scenario?
I'm specifically asking because I remembered a test scenario from 2009 where here in Switzerland exactly something like this was trained successfully.
The post below is in german, but on page 7 you can see some graphs of the flight path and finding the sources
https://www.naz.ch/downloads/de/%C3%9Cb ... 9%20de.pdf
I've read in our local news that a capsule containing Cs-137 was lost in Australia while being transported from a mine.
More can be read here:
[broken link removed - Steven]
One thing that I notice, is that our newspapers always mention that the capsule is very hard to find and probably will never be found. I know this could be overreacting of the media, but it seems that the search is still going on. I've also seen videos of firefighters carrying detectors and walking on the road.
Therefore i wonder, why not use helicopter devices?
Given the 9GBq mentioned in the article, calculated the following:
Assuming the Helicopter flying in the middle of the road, and assuming a diameter of 20m of the road, this would result in 10m of each side of the helicopter. Assuming a flight height of 25m, the maximum distance maximum distance to the source would be around 27m. With 9GBq this would still be a dose of 0.8uSv which is very well detectable.
So I wonder why this is no option / not used in this scenario?
I'm specifically asking because I remembered a test scenario from 2009 where here in Switzerland exactly something like this was trained successfully.
The post below is in german, but on page 7 you can see some graphs of the flight path and finding the sources
https://www.naz.ch/downloads/de/%C3%9Cb ... 9%20de.pdf