Robot Saves the Day at Radiation Lab

An anonymous reader writes "Nature.com is reporting that records released this week by the US defense department read almost like a bad movie plot. Back in October a high-security radiation lab had a cylinder filled with radiation get trapped in its delivery tube network. Fortunately a specially designed bomb-disposal robot was able to retrieve the canister before the radiation was able to eat its way free.

Comments

Dupe

[ajwitte]

Dupe of http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/ 17/0226200&tid=216&tid=14 This version links to a different story though... (fp?)

Interesting..... what application?

[BWJones]

the base's Gamma Irradiation Facility was paralysed when a cylinder containing cobalt-60 became lodged in one of the lab's air-pressure tubes,

Yikes! Cobalt-60 is almost as bad as it gets. Cobalt 60 radiation dosages are almost twice as bad as the actual dosage of radiation one would get from the fallout of an actual atomic device which sort of begs the question of what they are doing with it? Are they modeling fallout? Or are they experimenting with dirty bombs? Lining the inside of atomic devices with heavy metals and other elements is a way to create much more radioactive bombs that have long lasting radiation effects.

Although there *are* civilian applications such as medical therapy devices....

The canister, about the size of a salt cellar, was jammed against a seesaw-shaped switch inside the tube that was stuck in the wrong orientation.

OK, so this sounds like bad design just waiting for someone to screw up and reveal the design flaw.

Filled with Radiation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know 'radiation' was tangable. I'll have to update the Wikipedia article...

A little time discrepancy...

[FearTheFrail]

"On the third day, and after three weeks of continuous warning sirens..."

Whoah. It took them THREE DAYS? I'm glad this wasn't (obviously) a really serious problem. If it were some sort of radiation based bomb, they'd get fried.

Questions are begged:

1. Was it the robot that had been used for three days?
2. Or was that just how long the cobalt had been in there?
3. ...either way, what in the hell is triggering warning sirens for three weeks straight in a big-time radiation lab?

Please.....

[fractalrock]

...tell me the poster is joking around with the 'filled with radiation' and 'before the radiation was able to eat its way free' comments.

I was filled with radiation once.....once.

Re:Radiation - Seems to be a recurring problem.

[cbreaker]

Well, you solved it. Good job. Too bad these folks that play with this ultra-radioactive cobalt (the kind that kills you in 30 seconds or less) every day didn't think of that.

Re:Radiation - Seems to be a recurring problem.

[InvalidError]

A centimeter worth of lead would stop most of the lower-energy stuff.

The story is kinda ironic: the irradiated cobalt was intended to test electronics against radiation. So, the robotics lab that lended the robot got a free test-run to verify their radiation tolerance calculations.

Note to would-be evil geniuses: put your bombs in shells made of irradiated cobalt isotopes, it may disable would-be bomb-disposal robots and personnel before they can do anything about it. Radiation labs will get a free test of their security measures and delivery tubes out of the deal.

Re:Not to be picky

[Dun Malg]

But "radiation" can't be stored in a container. Radioactive material, however, can be. Add to that the fact that the submitter was anonymous, and this story should not have been picked up. Hmm. I wonder whats on digg right now.

Damn straight. It's ignoramuses like the anonymous submitter who keep irradiated food off the market when there's no rational reason for it. I could be dining off vacu-packed and irradiated steaks all week on a backcountry hiking trip, but because a bunch of dumbshits don't know the difference between "radiation" and "radioactive" I'm stuck with MREs and freeze dried crap.

damn that corrosive radiation

[drakewyrm]

"...before the radiation was able to eat its way free." That's choice. Sounds like the tagline from some poorly-researched sci-fi or action flick. Besides, the radiation was already present outside the canister; otherwise, there would have been no danger to personnel and no radiation alarms sounding.

As for the comment about the container being filled with radiation, I could excuse that as simply a mistake of terminology. You can fill the container with active or contaminated material, but you can't fill it with radiation itself. Contamination is the shit. Radiation is just the stink.

A more practical analogy would be light as an example of radiation. You can fill a box with flashlights, and you can shine light inside a box, but you can't fill the box with light.

The article makes reference to the radiation eating away at the robot's circuits. This is pure speculation, but I think this may have been a reference to the effect that high energy gamma radiation can have on digital circuits such as memory. That would be a bit of a metaphor, not a literal corrosion of the circuitry. Certainly, it does not imply that the canister was in danger of impending failure.