Comment by thadt
2 days ago
Agreed, this case is bananas.
If his "plutonium sample" is actually (probably) trinitite which you can just buy online [1], and if we assume an exposure of 1 uR/hr at one inch[2], then convert that to BED (Banana Equivalent Dose[3] - that taken from the naturally occurring potassium-40 in bananas) that's (handwaving actual dose calculations) about, what, 1/10 of a banana?
[1] https://engineeredlabs.com/products/plutonium-element-cube-t...
[2] https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/nuclea...
The plutonium sample is reported to be something similar to this,
https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-sovi... ("Analysis of Soviet smoke detector plutonium" (2017))
I believe it was this https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
Right, they're both Soviet ionization smoke detectors based on Pu-239. The Carl Willis blogpost is a teardown of one such similar item.
Oh, well if that's the case thats waaay more bananas. Like maybe around 4000.
Nobody should be eating that many bananas.
"This item is now discontinued." I wonder if this incident is the reason (or if it simply sold out in the aftermath).
>Agreed, this case is bananas
banana equivalent doses?