
HSN-1000 Nuclear Event Detector (2005) [pdf] - andyjohnson0
http://www.maxwell.com/images/documents/hsn1000_rev3.pdf
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teeray
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3179645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3179645)

The top comment there explains a good use-case for this chip.

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nabla9
This would be nice feature in home weather station.

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throwanem
Its minimum detection level is ~200Krad/sec (~2000Gy/sec). You would be
extremely dead by the time it tripped.

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Tehchops
That does seem pretty intense. To be close enough to get that dose I'd imagine
thermal/blast effects would be incredibly high anyways, rendering this chip
pretty useless.

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ben_w
1 Gray is an absorbed dose of 1 J per kg, so a 2,000 Gy/s event would mean a
typical 75 kg/165 lb human absorbing 150 kW.

This reminds me a bit of the XKCD question about how close you need to be to a
supernova to die from neutrinos: inside it.

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Teknoman117
Or the XKCD question about how much energy would be needed to take the phrase
"speed enforced by radar" literally - basically a fairly large nuclear weapon.

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starbeast
I want one in a hat. Perhaps wired to a party popper, or small flag.

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JaimeThompson
Is it possible for a normal person to order one of these? I can't seem to find
a source.

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fmajid
I'm a sucker for T&M equipment and actually own a Geiger counter, but this is
a bit much...

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pippy
How would you even test this? do they have an xray machine and remove the
filter?

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gh02t
You'd use a laboratory test source. It appears to be a miniaturized radiation
detector, which trips when the gamma and/or neutron fluence exceeds a certain
level. "Nuclear event detector" does not necessarily mean anything extreme
like a bomb going off, it just means exposure to an amount of radiation (from
any source) above a given threshold; it can't actually distinguish what the
source is.

So testing and calibrating it would consist of exposing it to a source of
known strength and making sure it trips. For this kind of setup, the source
doesn't have to be an actual nuclear weapon going off or whatever target
event, it'll trip for any sort of gamma or neutron source (presumably, it's
light on details and I haven't ever seen one of these in the wild). There are
a wide range of suitable industrial sources available commercially.

Edit: you can safely assume that the manufacturer provides a detailed
calibration procedure wherever the more complete documentation is. Probably
specifies what test sources to use and how to correlate them with different
types of target events, which they determined through simulation and
laboratory measurements. Also worth noting that this thing is very likely
entirely analog, given its intended use.

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inherentFloyd
>Maxwell Technologies Specified, Controlled, Tested and Guaranteed

Oh no.

