• Svante@mastodon.xyz
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    19 days ago

    @PugJesus Put into perspective — no, I’m not concerned about that. This thing will not harm any human ever.

    How can I say that? Because it is tiny. Even if it should somehow (how?) spontaneously and completely dissolve and be washed into some river (to be clear: this doesn’t happen), we just get a temporary slightly elevated heavy metal concentration, hard to even detect.

    This thing will not “poison India”. That’s bullshit.

    • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
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      19 days ago

      It may be tiny and it will most certainly not poison the entirety of India, but just because it’s tiny doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. The case of the Kramatorsk radiological accident shows that perfectly, a tiny radioactive capsule that somehow ended up in the wall of an apartment building killed four people. A similar capsule was lost in Australia just a few years ago and luckily it was found.

    • Arancello@aussie.zone
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      19 days ago

      how much is this derogatory comment to the potential pain, and suffering another country might experience because of a cavalier united states attitude. So typical. They dont care about their own neighbors let alone people on another continent

    • cjoll4@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      … the 50-pound, beach-ball-size nuclear device …

      … The climbers scampered down the mountain after stashing the C.I.A. gear on a ledge of ice, abandoning a nuclear device that contained nearly a third of the total amount of plutonium used in the Nagasaki bomb. …

      … Scientists say the generator will not explode on its own — for one, there’s no trigger, unlike in a nuclear weapon. But they worry about a sinister scenario in which the plutonium core is found and used for a dirty bomb.

      Are you absolutely sure? It doesn’t sound tiny.

      • marcos@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        a third of the total amount of plutonium used in the Nagasaki bomb

        That’s a bit more than 1 kg, or something like 4 pounds.

        50 pounds is the weight of the entire device. Most of what is probably shielding. Plutonium is more toxic than lead, but for comparison, airplanes emit around 400 tons of lead every ear in the US, and it’s not much of a problem.

          • marcos@lemmy.world
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            19 days ago

            Actually, no, and I don’t think I would even be allowed to if I tried.

            But that is still 400000 times more than this device.