[Milsurplus] Milsurplus Radiation

[Peter Gottlieb]

There's nothing "weird" about radiation from the sun.  Fortunately, most 
of the harmful stuff is blocked before it reaches us.

Cell damage from radioactive sources is related to integrated dosage.  
This is what we worry about for longer term low level exposure.  Low 
levels of exposure, and small amounts of damage, can usually be taken 
care of by the body (althought once in a while a cancer can be 
initiated).  But once you get too much damage, bad things are much more 
likely to occur.

I have a T/R tube or two that have tiny amounts of radioactive material, 
also some krytrons (laser start thyratrons) that have radioactive nickel 
but I can't measure anything outside of these.  Ionization smoke 
detectors have tiny amounts of material in them also (americium).  All 
these are essentially noise compared to background radiation levels 
which around here at least comes from the granite under us with its 
decaying trace amounts of uranium (this also creates radon gas that some 
people have to pump out of their basements).

The only two items I have that really move the PDR-27 meter nicely are 
the old altimeter and some old lantern mantles which supposedly have 
small amounts of thorium in them and both of these are barely 
discernable over background from 5 feet away.  I keep the mantles as a 
quick go/no-go PDR-27 tester as the meter test source was removed when 
the meter was surplussed.

Peter



C Whitaker wrote:

> de WB2CPN
>
> We get more weird radiation from the Sun and Space
> than we do from most other sources.   You guys
> remember that in WWII the aircraft had radioactive
> markings on most knobs and instruments.  There was
> a little UV light on a flexible cord that could be used
> when the cockpit had to be kept dark for Night Vision.
> A True War Story follows:  1963 on Okinawa a
> contractor who was building a new runway at Kadena
> requested authority to put mobile radios in some of
> his vehicles.  He was refused on the grounds that there
> was already way too much radiation on the island, and
> any increase was a hazard to the natives.  Swear.  Also,
> the Transmit/Receive tubes in large radar sets had a
> "Keep Alive" radioactive substance in them.
>
> 73  Clete
>
>
>
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