Let’s play hot (a.k.a radioactive) potato!
Published by punkass marc March 2nd, 2007 in HUH!?Sometimes, it pays to slap a padlock on the gates of the ol’ nuclear facility. Otherwise, ornery plant aficionados might decide to fertilize their tulips with your goodies:
A GERMAN man obtained enriched uranium and buried it in his garden, raising concerns about the security of Germany’s nuclear reactors.
Oh, the understatement. And how do the people in charge of Germany’s nuclear materials respond to these accusations of incompetance? By displaying their PhD in Mastery of the Obvious:
“How do (uranium) pellets get out of a nuclear reactor? That’s not supposed to happen,” said ministry spokeswoman Jutte Kremer-Heye.
Still, at least the German government reacted promptly upon discovering the uranium had been liberated.
Or not:
He wrote to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in December saying he wanted to hand it over, but it was not until last week that officials unearthed the pellets from his garden.
Ms Kremer-Heye said passing the letter on to the relevant government department had taken some time.
Look, I know what’s it’s like when you work for a large bureaucracy, and your inbox is piling up with requests you really don’t want to handle. You lob a few of the issues to some other department, transfer a few more down the hall, and get back to playing Yahoo chess.
But here’s a friendly tip to the government employees of the world: when a note comes in with the words “uranium” and “backyard” relatively close together, you may want to slap the Exclamation Point of Importance next to the subject line and forward that one to the boss yourself.
Hell no - you want to slip that note into the bottom of the IN Tray on someone _elses_ desk - no matter how quickly it’s dealt with, it’s going to leave the bureaucrat that’s holding the baby, with a career-ending egg on his/her face.
It was much worse than that! The guy found it years ago and the police didn’t do anything. Didn’t hear anything about him putting it there though. MAybe the Transatlantic phoneline jumbled the story a bit.
They were probably trying to grow tomacco.
How do (uranium) pellets get out of a nuclear reactor?
Wow, with all the “physicists” I learned were here from the false rape accusations debate, I’m shocked that nobody replied to this sentence. The pellets used in a standard reactor for electrical generation are safe to handle with only rubber gloves before they have been in the reactor, however after they have been in exposed to a neutron flux (in the reactor) transporting them without specialized, and not to mention expensive, equipment would ensure certain death for the transporter.
Well, going off of my experience, disposal of nuclear waste is not an aspect covered in undergraduate physics, and, from the fact that I know more about nuclear plants that one of my professors, graduate physics.
We’re more mathematical than anything else. I could help you out with the energy released from the reaction, though.
OK, but “well, he was wearing gloves, duh” doesn’t explain how a guy with some gloves could waltz out of a nuclear facility with the pellets. Hence the “that’s not supposed to happen” immediately following. Which I believe everyone agrees is the point.
People are supposed to be keeping track of that shit, ya know.
Did I sound impatient and snarky, there? I’m sorry, I meant to praise you for your cleverness.
Why Hans, thank you so much for condescendingly reiterating my question as to how they’d just wind up in someone’s backyard without all that protection. Tres insightful.