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Cleaning Up Japan's Radioactive Mess With Blue Goo
InfiniteZero writes "A clever technology is helping hazmat crews in Japan contain and clean up the contamination caused by the ongoing nuclear disaster there: a blue liquid that hardens into a gel that peels off of surfaces, taking microscopic particles like radiation and other contaminants with it. Known as DeconGel, Japanese authorities are using it inside and outside the exclusion zone on everything from pavement to buildings."
What? How will Repulsion Gel help us clean up Japan? It hardly worked at ALL for Aperture Labs.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
is find somewhere to dispose of all the zillions of "blue goo" sheets.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Alpha and beta radiation is radiation for as long as it is actually radiating. As soon as it impacts a surface and sticks, it becomes helium and electrons.
Radiation is short lived, and not a contaminate you can simply remove. Isotopes undergoing decay to produce said radiation can be removed.
there's a Japanese pornography joke in there somewhere...
DeconGel is a useful material, typically used for little lab-sized spill cleanup jobs. They're going to need tank truck loads of this stuff.
This material concentrates contamination, rather than spreading it across wipes, water, and other cleaning agents. The blue gel can even be incinerated in special high-temperature hazardous-waste incinerators; the radioactives end up in the ash, not the gases. So you end up with a modest number of drums of low-level radioactive dirt.
Perhaps with the need for large quantities of this stuff, the price will come down. If it were cheap, this would be a useful material for routine tough cleaning jobs. It can clean grouted tile, for example. People who have to clean foreclosed houses might find this useful.
Is this kind of like Silly Putty but the pictures glow in the dark?
They should use grey goo instead. That would clean things up even better, and they'd only need to apply a little bit of it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
That's a direct quote from the article, too -- from Popular Science magazine!
This sounds ominously like the stuff the Happy Fun Ball is made of.
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Ball.
Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.
Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:
itching
vertigo
dizziness
tingling in extremities
loss of balance or coordination
slurred speech
temporary blindness
profuse sweating
heart palpitations
If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.
When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration. Failure to do so relieves the makers of Happy Fun Ball, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company, Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.
Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
Happy Fun Ball has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Happy Fun Ball comes with a lifetime guarantee.
You're not part of the control group, by the way. You get the gel. Chernobyl got blue paint. Hahaha. All joking aside, that did happen - lots of people died. Tragic. But informative. Or so I'm told.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
From http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/25/technology/toxic_waste_cleanup_goo/index.htm
"One gallon of DeconGel nuclear decontaminant sells for $160 and covers between 50 to 100 square feet. "
The chemical was called Amber 31422. :)
Here is lots of new blue goo now.
New goo. Blue goo.
Gooey. Gooey.
Blue goo. New goo.
Gluey. Gluey.
Gooey goo for chewy chewing!
That's what that Goo-Goose is doing.
Do you choose to chew goo, too, sir?
If, sir, you, sir, choose to chew, sir,
with the Goo-Goose, chew, sir.
Do, sir.
My favorite Dr. Seuess book.
The article might have oversimplified things but the truth is radionuclides tend to happen in macroscopic clusters - kind of "dust particles". Single pieces of material sometimes almost a milimeter size (more frequently a few microns) often several centimeters apart, They may be ash, may be post-explosion dust, solid particles in smoke and so on that were heavily irradiated and settled away from the plant - and they account for great most of radiation sources in contaminated area.
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I don't think disinfectants do a very good job. Not to mention bacteria build up resistances to disinfectants and become more dangerous. Tossing them into a super heated furnace sounds like it would be much more difficult for them to adapt.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/03/04/hospital-bacteria-strain-killing-patients/
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/05/29/3661803/deadly-bacteria-lurk-inside-hospital.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/08/10/us-bacteria-hospital-idUSTRE5795AN20090810
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.