Rockets, nukes and explosions, oh my: so what happened near Nyonoksa, Russia?

a reply to: FredT

www.nzherald.co.nz...

originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: FredT

www.nzherald.co.nz...

I'm not surprised. If that article is true then the first responders had ZERO real protective gear and may themselves gotten a lethal dose and way better to shuttle them off to live or die out of view and you can contain the data as well.

They really haven't figured out that whole protecting your workers / environment / surrounding areas thing AT all.

At least US assembly points have layered protection like Gravel Gertie's etc en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: RadioRobert
a reply to: FredT

But that's it-- you should have way more Strontium-90 (and several other isotopes) than Strontium -91 just by virtue of how fast it decays and turns into Yttrium-91. Either Russia is bizzaro land for observed physics, or there is way more to this story than we're getting (shocked face).

Again not well versed in nuclear physics etc, but there may be a totally different release from a criticality incident vs a full blown meltdown in terms time etc. A criticality incident is very brief etc. But I could be wrong

a reply to: FredT

The whole thing is weird. Assuming the number given in that article anza listed (source article in Russian) the swipe test shows a relatively low value (220 dpm/100 cm^2). It's basically on the threshold of being labeled "contaminated" most places. Some places call 100 dpm/100 cm^2 contaminated. Others allow up to 500 dpm/100 cm^2. So the given values if I read the russian correctly is not an obvious hazard. No reason to quarantine the doctors -- at least not a health reason. Definitely a PR reason to stop them from talking to the press.
In the russian article, they talk further about how the response was a cockup. The hospital wasn't notified ahead of time, so no PPE was worn by attending staff, victims weren't scrubbed first at hospital because of no warning, victims should have been decontaminated prior to delivery anyway. One of the specialized ambulances with NBC-decontamination equipment was sent towards the test site when news of a radioactive accident was received, and so it was unavailable for the victims who were actually already re-located by then (that part sounds like something that could happen almost anywhere).
Basically I don't know that I believe anything coming out right now -- certainly not from the government! Easy to sympathize with the doctors left in the dark even if the doses were (apparently) low-end.

US intelligence suspects that a mysterious explosion at the Nyonoksa testing range earlier this month occurred during Russian efforts to recover a nuclear-powered cruise missile lost at sea during a previous test, CNBC reports, citing two sources with direct knowledge of the latest assessment.

www.businessinsider.com...

Russia removed three U.S. diplomats from a train near the site of a mysterious military testing accident on Monday because they did not have special permits to be in the area, the Interfax news agency reported on Wednesday.

...

Interfax cited a source as saying that the U.S. diplomats had been let go, but are regarded to have broken Russian law.

www.reuters.com...

Another weird story we'll never hear the truth about.