
Nuke’em Till They Glow – Quitting My First Job - jbyers
http://steveblank.com/2010/07/12/nukeem-till-they-glow-%e2%80%93-quitting-my-first-job/
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cmelbye
Very interesting. I remember hearing a story from someone that worked on a
nuclear reactor on an aircraft carrier. They did the same radiation checks on
the carrier, and it turned out that people out in the sun received more
radiation than the people working inside on the reactor.

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JacobAldridge
The OP received about 5 rems - equivalent to eating about 500 bananas (a BED
of 500) - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose>

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crystalis
Why are you being upvoted?

From your link: "The equivalent dose for 365 bananas (one per day for a year)
is 3.6 millirems (36 μSv)."

500 bananas is 5 millirems. Try 500k.

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JacobAldridge
My guess is that my recollection, connection, and linking to the concept of
the BED is being upvoted more than my math abilities.

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rdl
I think navy nuclear culture has changed quite a bit for the better since
then. All of the officers and petty officers I have talked to are at least as
conscious of rad safety as the civilian techs.

On the radiology and nuclear medicine side, air force and navy techs seem a
lot more rad safety conscious than the army people I have met.

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btilly
I read that in the exact opposite way.

Having whoever screwed up worst buy everyone else beer each week strikes me as
a very good way to shame that person, and encourage people to try to avoid
being that guy.

Yes, it is done in a joking manner, and it is accepted that everyone will be
that guy some time. But I know how I'd react.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Sounds like something that I have seen/heard at a couple of dev shops. Break
the build, buy doughnuts for your team. Not too expensive so as to ruin the
person, but enough of a token that you think about what you're doing.

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btilly
Another variation from
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html>, item 3, break the
build, it is now your job to shepherd the daily build until someone else
breaks it.

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jhy
That actually seems a lot more severe a form of punishment than buying donuts.
Release management can be a full-time gig.

(Aside: how many articles was Joel planning on writing when he came up with
that URL scheme? Crikey.)

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btilly
_That actually seems a lot more severe a form of punishment than buying
donuts. Release management can be a full-time gig._

Some teams want everyone to be familiar with how they do it. If that is your
goal, you have to pick the unlucky person in some way.

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balding_n_tired
Knew a professor long ago who had worked for the AEC out on Long Island when a
student. Some of the scientists would tune a cyclotron by putting an eye
behind the target and waiting for the retina to light up, she said. She also
said that a number had developed cataracts at an early age.

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b_emery
I worked at a nuclear plant during a college internship and can vouch for the
strange attitude toward radiation exposure. There were guys who would work
outages every year, receive their annual rad dose in a few months, and make
enough money to take the rest of the year off. Then back next year to do it
again. The max dose of 5 rem is about 20x the cosmic background - so 20 yrs of
radiation in a year! I chose a different career soon after figuring that out.

~~~
ScotterC
It is all relative to where you are. People in Ramsar, Iran get a daily does
of about 5 rems. See this paper <http://www.jpands.org/vol13no2/luckey.pdf>

Radiation can widely vary and very little is known about low dose radiation.
The nuclear industry follows a rule called ALARA As Low As Reasonaobly
Achievable which really just allows for these strict minimums. There is little
proof that 5 rems will actually cause a higher probability of cancer.

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mattheww
_you try fixing a sodium-iodide scintillation detector without a manual_

More like, you try finding a sodium-iodide scintillation detector that HAS a
manual!

Another great story, thanks for posting.

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surlyadopter
After having spent quite a few years around not so well funded labs I can
assure you that any piece of equipment older than a decade that still posesses
a manual is a rare sight indeed.

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protomyth
I always thought there must be some black market somewhere where someone is
buying all these old manuals..... (visions of a wannabe Bond villain)

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blhack
It's run by PHBs that get angry because your office is "messy" and "has too
many things in it", I swear.

/bitter

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ScotterC
The '5 Rem per year' allowance was set on faulty logic. It is all based on the
linear no-threshold theory which took the acute radiation exposures from the
Nagasaki and Hiroshima detonations and linearly projected them down to such
small amounts as 5 rem. This is in essence saying that if 100% of people would
die from jumping of a 100 ft building then 1% of people would die from jumping
off a 1 ft ledge.

Professor Emeritus Bernard L. Cohen of Pittsburgh University has a lot to say
on the matter: <http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/>

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crystalis
Consider if we'd only ever seen one person jump from a building, but it was
from 10,000 feet.

(Consider, also, that some might not find 'fall distance' a reasonable analog
to radiation relative to other options like 'head trauma induced by soccer
ball'.)

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ScotterC
There have been extensive studies into radiation exposure. From Navy nukes to
Japan's survivors (which are numerous), there's a ton of data but we are
dealing with a hypothesis that cannot be proved one way or the other. Low dose
radiation's effects appear to be negligible, but just in case we adhere to the
linear no threshold theory. This is fine, except for when it is abused and
cited to stop progress.

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crystalis
> This is fine, except for when it is abused and cited to stop progress.

This is a more reasonable stance than the blanket 'radiation regulation is
silly', but I hesitate to award it too many points - it's hardly a big step to
say you're against abuse and for progress. You can have progress and prevent
abuse while adhering to (potentially overly) strict safety regulations.

(I may also balk at your stark claim of unverifiability - radiation damage is
pretty demonstrable.)

