> On August 31st, 2010, a diver was servicing the spent fuel pool at the Leibstadt nuclear reactor in Switzerland. He spotted an unidentified length of tubing on the bottom of the pool and radioed his supervisor to ask what to do. He was told to put it in his tool basket, which he did. Due to bubble noise in the pool, he didn’t hear his radiation alarm.
When the tool basket was lifted from the water, the room’s radiation alarms went off. The basket was dropped back in the water and the diver left the pool. The diver’s dosimeter badges showed that he’d received a higher-than-normal whole-body dose, and the dose in his right hand was extremely high.
The object turned out to be protective tubing from a radiation monitor in the reactor core, made highly radioactive by neutron flux. It had been accidentally sheared off while a capsule was being closed in 2006. It sank to a remote corner of the pool floor, where it sat unnoticed for four years.
The tubing was so radioactive that if he’d tucked it into a tool belt or shoulder bag, where it sat close to his body, he could’ve been killed. As it was, the water protected him, and only his hand—a body part more resistant to radiation than the delicate internal organs—received a heavy dose
One of my favourite bits (and a fine example of Randall's sublime humour), comes right at the end:
But just to be sure, I got in touch with a friend of mine who works at a research reactor, and asked him what he thought would happen to you if you tried to swim in their radiation containment pool.
“In our reactor?” He thought about it for a moment. “You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.”
> On August 31st, 2010, a diver was servicing the spent fuel pool at the Leibstadt nuclear reactor in Switzerland. He spotted an unidentified length of tubing on the bottom of the pool and radioed his supervisor to ask what to do. He was told to put it in his tool basket, which he did. Due to bubble noise in the pool, he didn’t hear his radiation alarm.
When the tool basket was lifted from the water, the room’s radiation alarms went off. The basket was dropped back in the water and the diver left the pool. The diver’s dosimeter badges showed that he’d received a higher-than-normal whole-body dose, and the dose in his right hand was extremely high.
The object turned out to be protective tubing from a radiation monitor in the reactor core, made highly radioactive by neutron flux. It had been accidentally sheared off while a capsule was being closed in 2006. It sank to a remote corner of the pool floor, where it sat unnoticed for four years.
The tubing was so radioactive that if he’d tucked it into a tool belt or shoulder bag, where it sat close to his body, he could’ve been killed. As it was, the water protected him, and only his hand—a body part more resistant to radiation than the delicate internal organs—received a heavy dose
I love this book. Randall is such a gifted artist