Great Sequence of Video Documentaries on Nuclear Disasters

[jedishrfu]

Youtuber Kyle Hill has created a great sequence of videos on nuclear disasters around the world:



They include:
- THERAC-25 Medical Device disaster where cancer outpatients received doses many times greater than what the doctors prescribed
- The Demon Core: fissile material that scientists used to determine the point of criticality
- The Goiania Accident: how radioactive Cesium was accidentally dispersed throughout a Brazilian community

 

[jedishrfu]

Calling @Astronuc, you might like to check these out though I'm sure you most likely know the stories from industry sources.

 

[Astronuc]

- THERAC-25 Medical Device disaster where cancer outpatients received doses many times greater than what the doctors prescribed
- The Demon Core: fissile material that scientists used to determine the point of criticality
- The Goiania Accident: how radioactive Cesium was accidentally dispersed throughout a Brazilian community

These are some classic examples of negligent mishandling nuclear material. The incidents involving Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin. Slotin was particularly reckless given the Daghlian incident preceded his incident. Both of them would have received a substantial does of gamma radiation (about 7 or 8 gammas, 1 or 2 gammas from beta decay products and about 1 gamma from radiative capture in Pu from each fission event) in addition to the neutron radiation. Based on their positions near the cores, they would have received a faction of the total radiation emanating from the core, probably less than 20%. Slotin received much more though.

I'm familiar with the other events, which are sometimes discussed in courses on radiation protection and handling (or mishandling) of nuclear material.

 

[jedishrfu]

I learned about the Trinity Incident where cornfields in Indiana picked up nuclear fallout from the Trinity test. Kodak used paper made from their corn husks and had a quality problem with their Xray film having exposure blotches due to being wrapped in the paper.

Since Trinity was hush-hush top secret, they had trouble finding out about why they had Ce-141 made in the fires of a nuclear blast in their paper.

https://interestingengineering.com/science/when-kodak-accidentally-discovered-an-a-bomb-testing

The one I didn't know about was the Troy Incident where a thunderstorm going through the Capital District ie Albany Schenectady and Troy NY had dropped a lot of fallout from a 1953 nuclear test. An RPI (Troy) student noticed it on his geiger counter while doing some labwork.

https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/RPI-scientist-found-atom-bomb-fallout-553543.php