Thanks for watching!  If you would like to see my reaction to another Kyle Hill orphan source video, please check out: https://youtu.be/kdYEDbodP7g?si=3bPWVlcKd01l2N1S

Kyle's recent video about Fukushima's current water release plans demonstrates his journalistic integrity as much if not more so than the quality of his education on nuclear safety.

893 DAYS??
That has to be the worst death a human has ever had. At least people like peabody died immediately. Oh my god.

“We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” -Carl Sagan

I know that losing track of 1000 orphan sources is entirely unimaginable, but also, the reason why it happened was unprecedented. The idea of a national government with full nuclear capability, the USSR, dissolving over the course of months is hard to grasp. The amount of bureaucratic paperwork, knowledge, and oversight that just evaporated overnight is terrifying. So much invaluable information, such as the location of these estimated 1000 orphan sources, was simply lost. I don't know what could have been done to prevent this. No government ever plans ahead for what happens after it has dissolved.

If I'm out and about and see a smallish device out in the middle of nowhere and everywhere is snow packed except where the device is and is steaming I'm getting nowhere near it.

Even if you get 5 sieverts of dose and DON'T die in 60 days, that sounds like a horrifying 60 days of torture that would make you wish for death. Every new thing I learn about the soviet nuclear program is just absolute horror.

Also, the IAEA and the Georgian government were remarkably successful in securing these orphan sources.

Good god. 893 days of what must have been unbelievable, incomprehensible pain before finally dying. After only a month of that, I'd have asked the doctors to put me out of my literal misery.

The man definitely had a will to live, I'll give him that.

Yep. 'Slow is smooth - Smooth is fast"  It's faster to go slow and steady than it is to rush and screw up.

A lost nuclear weapon is an Orphan Source.
It is *also* a Broken Arrow - an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft, or loss of the weapon.

There have been 32 publicly known Broken Arrows, six of which have never been recovered.

A nuclear weapon as an orphan source would be a broken arrow.

Remember kids dont touch strangely warm metal

interesting story about one needing to know what you're dealing with:
back in the olden days, there was a horrific condition common among east german silver miners, which was essentially a combination of radiation poisoning and lung cancer.
this was because the soil in the southern mountains of east Germany wasn't just rich in silver ore, but also uranium ore, the value and danger of which was unknown to people of the time, this meant that miners were digging through uranium ore trying to get to the silver, not knowing what it was, inhaling dust particles, getting them on their clothes, going home in these clothes and spreading the contamination to their homes, resulting in nearly constant exposure.

when the east german government began mining uranium ore in earnest after WW-II under the supervision of the soviet union, the mines became much safer, anyone working there knew what they were dealing with, they had two locker rooms and a shower room in between, they'd leave their street clothes in locker room one when arriving, go through the shower room into locker room two to change into their work clothes.
after the shift they would leave their work clothes in locker room 2, hose each other down in the shower room (nobody washed themselves as that involved the possibility of you missing a spot) and then they would put on their street clothes again in locker room one, the work clothes never even left the mine, they had washing machines inside and the waste water was dumped back into the mine.

Mental note, if you find something oddly warm or glowing blue leave it alone. Fwiw these sources had 90Sr titanate in a titanium or stainless steel case. These were mounted in copper heatsinks surrouded by a bunch of TEG modules with aluminum heatsinks around them. These were the naked source capsuals, had it been the whole RTG unit they could have used it as a heater without ill effects. The copper and lead tulluride from the rtg would have shielded most of the radiation The intensity of this naked source would have been similar to an old GE dental x ray in both energy and intensity, except always on. 😮

I think Kyle Hills video "What if you put your head in a particle accelerator?" is going to satisfy the history, story, security and math sides of your brain.

25:22 I’ve seen enough urban exploring videos to know that that’s definitely true. There are so many abandoned hospitals with thousands of pieces of medical equipment just laying around rotting.

So if it was Pu238 instead of Sr90, they would have fine since Alpha vs Beta assuming the source wasn’t exposed.

23:30. Screw that! At that point I rather unalive myself than to endure through such painful death 😵

Your explanation of absorbed vs. equivalent dose finally made it make sense to me.  Thank you for this!  It's incredibly important for experts like you to talk about incidents like this for the same reason I listen to pilots talk about flight incidents--knowing how these incidents are handled and how much has been learned from them greatly reduces anxiety around them.  I'd love to see you react to a video about Three Mile Island, since it's closer to home for you.  Kyle and Plainly Difficult both have excellent videos on the subject, though Kyle's emphasizes the PR aspect more.

They used to make RTG’s at a place called the Mound which is on a plateau a half mile from my house. Space probes would be trucked in from wherever they were built and the RTG‘s were installed there. Most people in town were unaware of this; I knew because I read an article on the back page of a local newspaper.
Most people were only vaguely aware that it was some sort of defense plant. He was surrounded by razor wire fence, watchtowers and guards who patrolled the perimeter with an automatic weapon in one hand and a dog guard dog on a leash in the other. M
The facility was a Super Fund cleanup project about 20 years ago and it’s now an industrial park.