Contamination with Cobalt 60

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt.

what exactly was your question ?

Your question is not very clear to me, but if you are concerned about the possible source for the Co 60 found in that yard; I would look for a medical facility that disposed it illegally.

I too suspect medical waste as a source but not sure where your country is located so other source are possible.

The cobalt 60 needs to be separated and stored safely for a period of time.

This is from the Oak Ridges Lab site:

"The basis of radioactive waste management is simple. Because radioactive materials become less radioactive over time, the way to safely dispose of radioactive materials is to store them until they become nonradioactive. Different radioactive materials have different half-lives, so their storage times are different. For example, cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope used to sterilize medical equipment and treat cancer, has a five-year half-life. Thus, a pound of radioactive cobalt-60 five years later would decay to a half pound. Every five years the quantity is reduced in half. A rule of thumb is that, after 10 half-lives have passed, the material is essentially no longer radioactive."

Hope that helps.

Quick correction to that article; matter does not disappears, so pond of Cobalt will always be pound of Cobalt, only radioactivity of it will be reduced by half in 5 years.

Actually a po(u)nd of cobalt 60 will decay to nickel 60. So after 1 half life a pound of cobalt 60 will decay to some nickel and not be all cobalt 60. A small mass (very small) will be lost in the decay. I think the Oak Ridge Lab were interested in explaining the issue of decay and half life and used the analogy of mass.

While this is answer is (only slightly!) off topic, I gave you a GA anyway because apparently so few people understand the concept of transmutation. Hopefully your answer will help the OP wrap his mind around how to mitigate radioactive contamination.

"Who is John Galt?" Do you mean the guy married to Elizabeth Tilloch???

R&DDoc, Might I introduce you to the best book on free market principles ever written?

Atlas Shrugged, written by a woman who escaped the Soviet Union and became one of the strongest voices for free market principles ever.

John Galt was the books hero.

Rorschach Believe it or not, I have this book at my nigh-table: my eldest son (who freaked out reading it) gave it to me a couple of days ago. I started reading it last evening, but quited after some pages: perhaps too descriptive... perhaps too tired to read.. As not only my son, but also you recommend me to read it; Ill try again! Talking about John Galt: the Galt I poked you with was an English writer and politician, who became major of Quebec in the 18th century. Is the books hero this Galt or is the name just a coincidence ? KInd regards! BTW: are you a shrink?

Dear friends,

We had one from metal scrap in Delhi on 08 April, 2010. The scientists are working to dispose it off. You can visit zeenews.com for more details.

Regards.

Cobalt 60 is also commonly used in gamma cameras for radiographing welds. Since they are housed in heavy lead casings, it is common for uneducated thieves to steal them to sell the lead for scrap. We had a case here in Houston a few decades back where thieves broke into a fabrication shop that had gone out of business and was in the process of being liquidated and they stole three gamma cameras. Two with Iridium isotopes, and one with Cobalt. The thieves broke open the cobalt one (it was bigger) and when they discovered the softly glowing rod they freaked out and threw the rod in a ditch beside the road and sold the lead to a scrap dealer down the street. The scrap dealer realized what he had and called the authorities and they discovered the isotope laying in a deep ditch in front of a house with kids inside just minutes before the kids were due to come out and catch the school bus just a few feet away from where it was found. The thieves turned up in the emergency room shortly thereafter suffering from radiation sickness/burns.

The thieves turned up in the emergency room shortly thereafter suffering from radiation sickness/burns. THINGS LIKE THESE MAKE ME THINK THAT THERE HAS TO BE A GOD!!!! :-)

See Goiania accident with Cesium 137 in sept. 1987:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

On 13 September 1987, a radiation accidcnt occurred in the city of Goiania in central Brazil. Approximately 250 people were exposed to a 137-Cs source. At least 14 patients showed some degree of bone marrow depression, and eight developed the classical signs and symptoms of acute radiation syndrome (ARS). Twenty-eight people presented local radiation injuries ranging from first to third degree, and 104 individuals showed evidence of internal contamination.

Scavengers dismantled a metal canister from a radiotherapy machine at an abandoned Cancer Clinic in Goiania, Brazil. Five days later a junkyard worker pried open the lead canister to reveal a pretty blue, glowing dust: radioactive cesium-137. In the following days, scores of Goianian citizens were exposed to the radioactive substance. In a nuclear disaster second only to Chernobyl, the city of Goiania had one of the largest radioactive leaks on its hands and for a few days, they knew nothing about it.
http://lawnorder.blogspot.com/2003/03/case-study-accidental-leakage-of.html

Unfortunately, it is not just thieves that may be responsible for disposal issues. There are unscrupulous waste disposal contractors such as the group in Italy that helped to create a much larger problem by disposing highly toxic material cheaply for profit.

Illegal dumping Main article: Radioactive waste dumping by the 'Ndrangheta

"Authorities in Italy are investigating a 'Ndrangheta mafia clan accused of trafficking and illegally dumping nuclear waste. According to a turncoat, a manager of the Italy's state energy research agency Enea paid the clan to get rid of 600 drums of toxic and radioactive waste from Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and the US, with Somalia as the destination, where the waste was buried after buying off local politicians. Former employees of Enea are suspected of paying the criminals to take waste off their hands in the 1980s and 1990s. Shipments to Somalia continued into the 1990s, while the 'Ndrangheta clan also blew up shiploads of waste, including radioactive hospital waste, and sending them to the sea bed off the Calabrian coast.^[62] According to the environmental group Legambiente, former members of the 'Ndrangheta have said that they were paid to sink ships with radioactive material for the last 20 years.^"

^{This incident(s) in Italy can only make you wonder who else commits this type of fraud and disregard on our society as a whole. How widespread is illegal disposal of all toxic waste including radioactive material.}

There was an incident 10-15 years ago, again here in Houston, where a load of 6AL4V titanium barstock from Russia was shipped to a metals distributor for distribution. Some of it was then sold to a local machine shop to machine some downhole oil tool parts from and the cuttings were then in turn sold to JL Proler, a major scrap metals company. The load was routinely scanned with a Geiger counter and was discovered to be hot. VERY hot. the load was traced back to the metals distributor where the other titanium barstock was also found to be very radioactive as well. By that time quite a bit of the distributor's facility had been contaminated by handling the barstock. the load was traced back to the Russian mill and the theory (none of this can be proven because records are non-existant from there on back) is that the titanium pressure vessels of a number of scrapped Soviet/Russian nuclear subs/ships had been cut up and sold as titanium scrap. The titanium vessels had been neutron activated from the neutron bombardment as well as contaminated with fuel residue. There are rumors that the Russian Mob had been involved with stealing the high level nuclear waste and reselling it as scrap but that was of course never proven.

They had to bury the lathe the parts were made on, The forklifts from both the machine shop as well as the metals distributor, and they had to scrape several inches of topsoil from both the machine shop and the metals distributor's yards in an effort to clean up the mess.

Zasmine,

I will share with you a tip from the steel industry on how we assure that we don't pass along radioactive contaminated products.

1) we have radiation detectors at all gates where all scrap trucks and rail cars enter the works.

2) we have a geiger counter at the lab at the melt shop where the samples come in.

In order to prepare the sample, it has to be passed across the geiger counter tube because of the way we built our poka yoke (mistakeproofing ) into this process.

3) The final product exits by rail or truck thrrough the same gates as the scrap, so if finished product had radioactivity it too would be detected.

Radioactive contamination can enter the steel making process one of two ways-

Either contaminated scrap coming in to be melted, or if a radioactive device (gamma ray mold level control for instance) were to fall into molten steel.

The detectors at gates screen scrap and out bound materials, handling the first case, and the detector on the sample prep table at the melt shop lab covers again the first case and the second.

I cannot imagine how whoever was responsible for the licensed radiactive materials at these locations that are being discussed failed to assure their security.

milo

Thanks for GA Rorschach. Another even more sinister problem is the disposal of radioactive gold. Radioactive gold has medical uses as well as in electronics. The value of gold is quite high and the price is inviting to the bad guys. There are problematic reports of workers dismantling nuclear warheads and salvaging small amounts of gold used in the electronics on these warheads but the gold is now quite radioactive. It makes one wonder where all the used radioactive gold ends up. If it is made into jewelry it may take many years to become a serious health issue. Hopefully my gold fillings are OK.

Maybe they will invite us to Fort Knox to check out the stockpile. I am sure we could scrap some of those gold bricks lol.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1451360/pdf/cmaj00199-0013a.pdf

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/aug99/metals14.htm

Co-60 is one of the high power isotopes used in irradiation of food, and in radio-therapy of cancer. How it got there is serious, as it is tightly controlled. Your body makes use of cobalt by taking up cyanocobalamine (or B-12). Contamination w/ Co60 is one of the BAD ones.

Did you contact the http://nnsa.energy.gov/about/index.htm ?