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The NYT reports that thousands of visitors converged Saturday on the Trinity Test Site in New Mexico where the first nuclear bomb was detonated nearly 70 years ago. Many posed for pictures near an obelisk marking the exact location where the bomb went off and were also able to see a steel shell that was created as a backup plan to keep plutonium from spreading during the explosion. "It brought a quick end to World War II, and it ushered in the atomic age," Erin Dorrance said. "So out here in the middle of nowhere New Mexico changed the world 70 years ago." Pete Rosada, a Marine Corps veteran, drove with another military veteran from San Diego to make the tour. Rosada said he previously visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese targets of atomic bombs during World War II after the test at the Trinity Site. "This completes the loop," said Rosado.
Tourists who joined a vehicle caravan out to the site at a school in Tularosa were greeted by demonstrators from the Tularosa Basin Downwinders who came to protest the 70th anniversary tour. The Downwinders is a grass-roots group that has set out to bring public awareness about the negative impacts of the detonation of the bomb. Henry Herrera was 11 years old when he got up to help his father with the car on that fateful July morning in 1945 and says the dust from the blast scattered all over Tularosa, remembering how his mother had to wash clothes twice that day due to the fallout dusting the family's clothes line. "I stop to think I'm one lucky, fortunate guy because I'm here and so many are dead," says Herrera. "Gobs of people from around here died and nobody knew what they died of, they just went to bed and never woke up." Albuquerque resident Gene Glasgow, 69, visited the Trinity Site for the first time with relatives from Arizona. Born and raised in New Mexico, he said he'd grown curious through talking to people who witnessed the explosion, including one man who was laying trap line in the mountains at the time. "He thought the end of the world had come."
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 07 2015, @12:26AM
I wonder how much the cancer probability goes up by visiting these sites? I suspect local water and dust may be the largest culprits.
Perhaps the perfect opportunity to sell a health insurance? :P
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday April 07 2015, @12:28AM
Not much from what I read. You will get more radiation on the flight down there.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 07 2015, @12:51AM
If you ingest or drink radioactive particles that's way worse than to be exposed externally.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday April 07 2015, @01:23AM
It is chemically similar to calcium. If you ingest it, inhale it, get it into your eyes it will eventually get into your bones, then irradiate your bones.
I think Uranium gets into your fat but I am unclear.
Aside from their radioactivity, many heavy metals are also chemically toxic. I strongly suspect that I myself have neurological damage as a result of inhaling mercury vapor when I was a kid.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 07 2015, @01:30AM
How did you get exposed to Mercury vapor? especially as a kid.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KilroySmith on Tuesday April 07 2015, @01:38AM
Generally amalgam dental fillings, or perhaps playing with Mercury (not uncommon when I was a kid).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday April 07 2015, @02:30AM
My first really serious career choice was to be a Chemist - that is, to do Chemistry research as a University Professor. I was quite serious about this.
My father encouraged it as he had been a chemist at one time.
Though my mother had no clue about Chemistry, she encouraged it as her father was a surgeon.
Mom gave me about two ounces of Mercury. She had no clue how dangerous it was. Dad should have known but he never said anything; at the time he was very focussed on his MSEE studies.
It is quite cool to hold liquid Mercury in the palm of your hand. The way it moves and feels, it is as if it is a living creature. But it is both very dense, yet has a very very low viscosity. Inevitably it spills onto the ground.
I didn't want it to go to waste so I would suck it out of the carpet with a glass eyedropper but it wasn't really possible to get it all up.
What leads me to suspect Childhood Mercury Vapor Inhalation Poisoning is that I am diagnosed with a whole bunch of quite serious mental illnesses and neurological conditions, yet I have a bachelor's in Physics, while I didn't complete my PhD I did well in grad school and have been a coder for 27 years. It is uncommon for anyone with Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder to hold a regular job.
What led me to suspect the Mercury poisoning is that I have trouble regulating my body temperature. Other people who are in the same environment as I am don't experience that.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday April 07 2015, @03:53AM
Most outward presentations involve symptoms you don't mention [wikipedia.org], and take significant exposure over a long period.
Unless you ingested quite a bit of it, or handled it for a long period of time, I doubt it had any affect on you. It is absorbed through the skin, but this takes prolonged exposure.
I had quite a collection of mercury as a kid, harvested from mercury tilt switches out of thermostats. My 7th grade science teacher gave me a sturdy vial of mercury to help with a science experiment because my collection wasn't sufficient. Nobody seemed to have any concern about mercury at the time. Even though the ill effects of prolonged exposure were well known, short term risks, (which are subtle and manifest over years) were largely ignored back in the 60s.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday April 07 2015, @04:56PM
In a small room, the vapor from just one drop will kill you.
The symptoms I experience are specifically those of childhood mercury vapor inhalation poisoning.
The rest of my family experienced neurological symptoms as well.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @09:32PM
That isn't supported by my experience playing with broken thermometers, nor by toxicology studies [epa.gov]. Experiments sensitive to vibration, like the Michelson-Morley [aip.org], were done by floating apparatus in a substantial (as compared to a single drop) pool of mercury.
Maybe if you were talking about something like dimethylmercury, then that would be a different story. Or, if you heated your drop of mercury to 357C and boiled it to vaporize it all very quickly, stuck your head over it, then inhaled it all at once, even that would be a stretch; maybe let your toddler inhale it all at once, then that would probably be an issue. Sit a few drops of mercury out in a "normal" sized room and the vapor is well under the OSHA safe limits.
(Score: 1) by SacredSalt on Tuesday April 07 2015, @05:15AM
Mercury was also used in a LOT of interior and exterior paints. I find it pretty obnoxious that this was used in interior paints, and no real thought was given to it. Apparently it had some sort of stabilization property for the paint.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 07 2015, @10:52AM
Guess it's the "NEW SHINY THING" that hit a whole society and subsequent careless use. We are probably doing the same mistake with nano particles, epoxi and reinforcement materials for polymer products.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @01:37AM
Nope. It's from gulping down Richard Feynman's semen in college. Tell us more about The Fine Man, O Great One.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday April 07 2015, @02:24AM
One hour each wednesday at 5:00 PM. You could ask any question you wanted - not just physics - provided it was purely conceptual and did not require him to work out any mathematics.
I understood quantum mechanics well enough to get good grades on my homework but regarded it as delusional because I was so heavily into the Classical Newtonian idea of the Clockwork Universe. Five months of physics x enabled me not only to believe quantum indeterminism, but to gain a deep insight into it. This was mostly the result of discussing the two-slit experiment. (Wikipedia should have an article about it.)
The clincher for me was that the experiment works with electrons, not just light, and that one could use a very low current so that one could detect the shot noise of individual electrons jumping off the filament. Despite that the interference pattern still forms.
I'll have more to say later, right now I gotta go find something to eat.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @02:35AM
When examined closely enough, the universe can be downright indecisive.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @03:57AM
> I strongly suspect that I myself have neurological damage as a result of inhaling mercury vapor when I was a kid.
To be honest, we all suspected it too, but didn't want to say anything.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @01:02PM
I actually had thought something more akin to the "autism spectrum", but what do I know?
of course, my employers had once let out on accident that they describe me to others as the really smart guy that is a high functioning autistic because he has quirks, like disagreeing with blind obedience to them and not being motivated by slogans they found on the internet.
They said it explained why I did not drink with them after work and why I was smarter than them (I couldn't be normal and smart, I suppose). Of course, they did not realize that I do/did not drink with them after work because they generally spoke of others in a negative way even before they started drinking and then expected you to agree or heap on the insults to someone not there to hear it. It seems that perhaps they are not high functioning enough to realize it? I guess not wanting to get drunk with your bosses is the sign of a mental health disorder on top of the daily insubordination of being paid to put up managers who believe that we should work harder so they can afford another vacation to vegas while saying there was no money to provide as an incentive to work the weekend billing at an OT rate that we as salaried employees see no part of--but there might be a bonus in it for us if they win big! So everyone start working hard so the owner can go to vegas!
All of these things end up with me getting described as being a high-functioning autistic obstacle to their success. It may be that I have mental health issues, but it is because of work, not because I brought them with me to work...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by SacredSalt on Tuesday April 07 2015, @05:25AM
Hot particles are always the bigger problem. My main issue with nuclear power is not that it operates on the edge of a serious event continuously -- its that there are always leaks and always water going where you don't want it. Its just not possible to build a vessel to hold it under the heat and other pressures its on forever. Water carves canyons and caves if you give it long enough, and add a mess of heat to the mix and it does it even more effectively. The water coming out of the plants from those releases tends to contain things like radioactive tritium -- which is not so pleasant if it lands in your drinking water. Its nice when the talk about dilution, but dilution doesn't matter if the hot particle gets stuck in an area that causes the chain reaction that leads to cancer or vascular issues in your body!
For people that think I'm kidding, you would be hard pressed to find a reactor operating in USA today that is 40 years or more old (which would be pretty much all of them) which hasn't had some major release of contaminated water, many of them several million gallons over time). Maybe that is okay if it flows into a river and settles somewhere ... Its generally not so good when it flows into the aquifer that you get all of your drinking water from. That water tends to contain a lot of other radioactive particles as well, but usually in lesser quantity.
(Score: 1) by deadstick on Tuesday April 07 2015, @03:19AM
Just visiting the site incurs a trivially small exposure, but you would not want to pick up any of the rocks and keep them (and the authorities work to ensure you don't). Globs of rock melted into glass, called trinitite, were once collected and ground into jewelry...not a good idea.
(Score: 3, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday April 07 2015, @09:46AM
> Just visiting the site incurs a trivially small exposure
Ha! Now I have an excuse for not RTFA!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Tuesday April 07 2015, @10:46AM
Is this Trinitite so radioactive, it can't even sit in a cabinet without being a hazard?
I calculate a stone of the dimensions 5 x 2 x 2 cm would have an activity of 3180 Bq. It should be below health limits?
Making jewelry of these materials seems however like challenging the destiny.
(density of Granite 2.650 g/cm³ * 2*2*5 cm = 53 gram * 10 Bq/g * 6 isotopes = 3180 Bq)
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Tuesday April 07 2015, @04:31PM
I've been there and I'm perfectly fine.
*twitch*
:)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday April 07 2015, @12:43AM
I am skeptical that happened to anyone as a result of the Trinity Test.
I don't doubt that lots of them got cancer, but cancer is general very slow to grow. Consider that Richard Feynman looked directly at the blast - without welder's goggles. He taught me at Caltech in the early eighties. While he did go one to perish of a very rare cancer, it was not until several years after that.
Even very severe radiation poisoning, while very sickening is not that quick.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday April 07 2015, @01:23AM
No one died during or shortly after these bomb tests.
Thirty years on, cancer rated were higher.
It was the known and expected affect of low(-ish) level radiation.
I think that line was thrown in by the journalist, (Tara Melton) just because she was covering the Downwinders. The Downwinder piece is full of platitudes
and inaccuracies. (Including the claim on the Downwinder's sign.)
70 years on, the 11 year old kid is 81. If you are 81, almost everyone you ever knew has already died, and in only a few cases did you ever
fully understand the reason why. That doesn't mean nobody else did.
The test site wasn't as well studied as other sites, Either before or After. It was rather hurriedly chosen,
see http://www.lahdra.org/reports/LAHDRA%20Report%20v5%202007_App%20N_Trinity%20Test.pdf [lahdra.org]
Interesting reading about the preparations and test shots with regular explosives.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday April 08 2015, @06:25AM
It depends on how you define "shortly after." A few months ago, I read a fascinating but seriously disturbing detailed two-part interview (part 1 [unlv.edu], part 2 [unlv.edu]) with a couple from Salt Lake City, which turned out to be hit hard by fallout according to the National Cancer Institute. According to their experience and studies performed by NCI/others, very abnormal numbers & types of cancer deaths in SLC and southern Utah were already spiking to a very alarming degree by 1955, especially among children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @01:41AM
Solar Power everywhere! No nuclear, not on my planet! Outsource all nuclear power to the Sun instead!
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 07 2015, @04:34AM
"We have become death, destroyer of worlds"
Necrophilia! It's not just for breakfast any more!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @06:07AM
radiation inside you is badder then from oitside.
radiation also damages your potential offspring... for a long time.
if you get "naturally" irradiated my airplane flight you also interact with corresponding tacbyons thus it is bad but not as bad as being artificially irradiated with missing tachyons.