
Half-life - wallflower
https://features.propublica.org/los-alamos/chad-walde-nuclear-facility-radiation-cancer/
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RMarcus
I worked at Los Alamos for several years, and wore a TLD (dosimeter, radiation
detection device). The only two times mine was ever "triggered" _was_ when I
left it on at the dentist (x-ray) and at the airport (x-ray).

It's interesting to see that these explanations are suggested even when
employees say it isn't the case -- when I was "brought in" for my "why did you
get this many mrems" talk, I explained about the dentist and the airport, and
still got sent home (for a week!) with three doctor's visits and additional
screenings. Many anecdotes != data, but when I asked a lot of my friends who
worked there, or still work there, they were equally surprised.

None of us knew Chad Walde. It's well-known that different groups at the lab
take safety more or less seriously. Which is obviously a huge problem when
your dealing with source material.

I do wish the article had a little less of a "nuclear taboo" doom & gloom to
it... there's less background radiation in Los Alamos than there is in Los
Angeles. And substantially less than areas surrounding coal plants. In my
experience, the "fear of the glow" causes people to view nuclear power with
extreme suspicion... even when coal & oil plants actively pump far more deadly
stuff into the air, far closer to major population centers.

The lab needs to get their shit together, and I believe they've done a lot
over the past 10 years... hopefully it keeps moving in the right direction...

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code_duck
Not surprising. I grew up in New Mexico and recently lived for a year in Los
Alamos, with a girlfriend working as a researcher. I was looking for a space
for a workshop and almost rented out a garage across from a suspicious empty
field… It turned out to be the site of an original Manhattan Project landfill.
This piqued my interest, and I looked into the environmental history of Los
Alamos. As recounted in the article, the history and current situation are
terrifying and incredibly irresponsible. I’m not sure how anyone could ever
think that dumping water containing plutonium straight into the ground was not
going to be a problem. The thing is, this sort of wanton pollution is hardly
unique to Los Alamos. The federal government, military and contractors like
the University of California did this all over the country, especially in the
west, even very near populated areas. Polluting the surrounding areas is a
slightly different topic then poisoning workers, but the attitudes and shoddy
practices responsible are the same.

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smueller1234
"Chad went through increasing levels of radiation training, including an
eight-hour course that teaches lab employees what ionizing radiation is, how
it penetrates bodies and how they can protect themselves. It is required for
workers whose jobs routinely place them in areas with high radiation,
contamination or airborne radioactivity."

I used to work at a nuclear research facility in Germany. One of the side jobs
available as a PhD student was to teach this type of training, designed to
teach the layman about ionizing radiation and some basic safety rules. (For
example the difference between external radiation doses and the potentially
much more dangerous role that ingested radionuclides may play.)

These trainings were, if I recall correctly, two days long. I remember being
told that they were required for anyone who might enter any commercial nuclear
power plant in a professional capacity, including any local contractors,
firemen, you name it.

My point is: the article positions this as some advanced course, when it
really is the absolute basis, taught to everyone, geared to all out
pragmatism. Knowing that, it makes me doubt some of the other suggestions and
conclusions in the article, even though it's not hard to imagine that these
sites at least had a history of playing fast and loose in the early days.

By the way, the most important lesson from that training was: you can't see
radiation, so instead of second guessing, calmly get as far away as possible
(radiation on surface of a sphere goes with 1/r^2) and alert someone with more
detailed understanding. "Shielding" likely doesn't quite do what you think, so
prefer distance.

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bpchaps
Interesting to see this on HN. I applied for a job at propublica where the
application asked to replicate the research for a story from their local
reporting network. I picked this article, and went as far as I could on the
FOIA side of research.

For anyone curious, here are my research notes:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iu_evesAD8hiSjAsZ5l7h6zr...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iu_evesAD8hiSjAsZ5l7h6zrshOgAtmW2ivDgG4pYkw)

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tambre
> Access denied

You'll have to adjust the permissions on that document.

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bpchaps
Thanks - fixed.

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starbeast
If you do not actually include an enforcement process in your bureaucratic
monitoring system, then most of your data detailing what goes on in some of
the most heavily regulated and dangerous professional environments in
existence, will be utter fictions written up at the end of the month when the
paperwork is due and is in a state far worse than useless. This often kills
people and it sometimes kills industries -
[https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsbnfl-staff-falsify-
mox-...](https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsbnfl-staff-falsify-mox-data)

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the_clarence
Can we get a better title? I thought this was about the game

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reshie
its fitting i think. its all about perspective and context albiet the title
does not give context but depending on your perspective and/or background it
fits.

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equalunique
Incredibly sad. I am hopeful that the trend towards technological
interconnectedness (survellience & IoT, as examples) means that critical gaps
in records will become a thing of the past.

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findyoucef
My friend's dad died of brain cancer in 2012. He worked here for years.

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kelsolaar
Moving and sad story.

