15 Jun
2007
15 Jun
'07
5:38 p.m.
On 6/15/07, William Maddox <wmaddox at pacbell.net> wrote:
Some years ago, an old decomissioned Cobalt-60
radiation therapy machine that had been sold to a
Mexican hospital ended up in a lot of scrap metal.
The problem was detected when a truckload of "hot"
steel rebar set off the radiation detectors when
coming *into* one of the weapons labs. It turned out
some of the metal had ended up in the cast-iron stands
for restaurant tables (McDonald's, I think). I wonder
how much of this radiactive metal was never located...
Off-topic, see the December 6, 1983 entry here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_radiation_accidents
On-topic, see the 1985 to 1987, Therac-25 entry and read the details
of how a PDP-11 was partly responsible for killing at least 5 people.