A Radiation Tale: Was: Re: Magnetic Effects

[William R. Penrose]

In article <01bc2836$3cfba100$257e5acf at rhonda> "Adam Reed" <arreed at erinet.com> writes:
>> 
>> Idiot.  Idiot, idiot, idiot.
>> 
There you go again, UncleAl, berating the little people for not being as smart 
as you.  Remember that 99.99% of the people in the world are not as smart as 
you and I.  You can destroy one, but you can't destroy them all, so you have 
to tolerate them.  They run everything.

I have a nice story about radiation.  Once at a not-to-be-named national lab 
of my acquaintance, a man touched an old sealed tube of plutonium, which was 
under a lot of helium pressure from alpha decay, and it exploded.  He inhaled 
a little of the Pu, and was immediately whisked through the health physics 
procedures, long-term urine measurement and whole-body scanning, etc.  They 
found minute traces in him.

Afterward, there was a prolonged investigation involving two return trips to 
Washington.  My friend in health physics calculated that the man received ten 
times more radiation during the four airline trips than he received from the 
plutonium exposure.

Bill


"Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you criticize him, you're a mile away and you've
got his shoes."  (A. Landers)
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Bill Penrose, President, Custom Sensor Solutions, Inc.
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email wpenrose at interaccess.com
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