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  #1  
Old 11-21-2012, 04:08 PM
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bobabode bobabode is online now
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Angry Downwinders

Anybody heard of "Downwinders"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders
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  #2  
Old 11-21-2012, 05:05 PM
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Yes. I worked for DOE for twenty years.
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Old 11-23-2012, 03:45 PM
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Originally Posted by finnbow View Post
Yes. I worked for DOE for twenty years.
Contractual downwinder? At least you got one of those cool dosimeters out of it!

An unfunny incident happened in the L.A. basin in 1958 when I was just a year old. They popped off one of those nuke weapons and the fallout swirled back into the L.A. basin instead of heading east and sat there for two weeks under one of our infamous inversion layers. Oldest brother had his thyroid removed and my older sister died from ovarian cancer. Is there a connection? Who knows? Thanks DOE...
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Old 11-23-2012, 05:27 PM
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Originally Posted by bobabode View Post
Contractual downwinder? At least you got one of those cool dosimeters out of it!

An unfunny incident happened in the L.A. basin in 1958 when I was just a year old. They popped off one of those nuke weapons and the fallout swirled back into the L.A. basin instead of heading east and sat there for two weeks under one of our infamous inversion layers. Oldest brother had his thyroid removed and my older sister died from ovarian cancer. Is there a connection? Who knows? Thanks DOE...
No DOE back then. 'Twas the Atomic Energy Commission. They were far more irresponsible (though probably more effective in their mission) that today's DOE, created by Jimmy Carter in a fashion similar to Dubya's Dept of Homeland Security (both are loose amalgamations of previously unrelated sub-cabinet level agencies).
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Last edited by finnbow; 11-23-2012 at 05:29 PM.
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Old 11-23-2012, 08:27 PM
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Anyone of you old guys and gals remember the x-ray machines at the shoe stores...to see if your shoes fit right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope

fluoroscopy is serious since it is like turning on a continuous wave of radiation...think like turning on a shower and radiation pours out. An actual x-ray is just a snapshot of gamma radiation onto a silver coated piece of film (or digital plate today)...it is not like a shower but a small quick high energy dose that is quickly over. That is why you hear a beep when u get an x-ray the beep is the actual exposure.

There was much ignorance about radiation in those days. If you find a shoe fluoroscope at Goodwill do not try to restore it
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Old 11-23-2012, 08:43 PM
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mpholland mpholland is offline
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I still live downwind and downriver from Hanford. Just one more thing I can blame some of my issues on.
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Old 11-24-2012, 09:45 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by icenine View Post
Anyone of you old guys and gals remember the x-ray machines at the shoe stores...to see if your shoes fit right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope

fluoroscopy is serious since it is like turning on a continuous wave of radiation...think like turning on a shower and radiation pours out. An actual x-ray is just a snapshot of gamma radiation onto a silver coated piece of film (or digital plate today)...it is not like a shower but a small quick high energy dose that is quickly over. That is why you hear a beep when u get an x-ray the beep is the actual exposure.

There was much ignorance about radiation in those days. If you find a shoe fluoroscope at Goodwill do not try to restore it
The Science channel had a show on the use of crude "Tricho" x-ray machines in the 1890s-1920s to remove unwanted facial hair. Untrained and unliscenced beauty shop owners could buy these machines and use them on their customers. The machines were pretty much----unshielded. Thousands radiated themselves and their customers causing a wave of cancer and radiation burns.

http://www.museumofquackery.com/ephemera/tricho.htm

Regards,
Dave
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Old 11-24-2012, 01:06 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by finnbow View Post
No DOE back then. 'Twas the Atomic Energy Commission. They were far more irresponsible (though probably more effective in their mission) that today's DOE, created by Jimmy Carter in a fashion similar to Dubya's Dept of Homeland Security (both are loose amalgamations of previously unrelated sub-cabinet level agencies).
The workeres at Miamisburg sued them over their irresponsible handling of adioactive materials. Funny thing is that it has been about 7 or 8 years since they last called Florence to see if she was still alive.
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Old 11-25-2012, 06:50 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mpholland View Post
I still live downwind and downriver from Hanford. Just one more thing I can blame some of my issues on.
I remember in a nuclear chemistry course I had at UCSD, the Professor walking in with a scanner and easily finding all the students that had recently worked with radioactive isotopes in their biology courses. Interesting stuff.

Sadly, I just learned that that Professor, James Arnold, died January 2012. He was one of the people behind carbon dating in Libby's lab and also worked on The Manhatten Project. In the spirit of this new environmental sub-forum, here are a couple of links wrt the early foundations of the notion of global warming and atmospheric carbon.

An interview with James Arnold:
http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/31207.html

Roger Revelle's Global Warming idea from AIP:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Revelle.htm

I was fortunate to have courses from both Roger Revelle and James Arnold.

Here's a quote from Arnold's interview regarding the Fermi Institute:

Quote:
Arnold:
Oh, yes. The Institute for Nuclear Studies, the Fermi Institute now, was an extraordinarily lively place. It was one of three institutes. Fermi was the famous leader, but, so they say, exaggerate slightly, Nobel laureates or future Nobel laureates were kind of a dime a dozen around that place. And Leo Szilard, who we were talking of, was in another institute devoted to biology. So there were stellar people around, and people communicated with each other. There was a lot going on, and it was exciting, and people talked…
A couple of observations:

"Communicating with each other" may have been more common then than now despite today's ubiquity of communications channels.

I found that reading the Arnold interview and having at least a passing knowledge of the players and their academic work helps in understanding the concepts underlying global warming. The reinterpretation by the pop-scientists and the media have done much to harm both science and solutions to global warming.
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