Friday, June 29, 2007
Whole Body Counter
I had to condense so much footage to get this clip. Please let me know how much is understandable, what needs to be added, what is superfluous, and what needs to be further explained. This section is intended to be more specifically towards an audience of physicists. I asked whether someone needed a perscription from a doctor to be scanned, or what they had to pay to be scanned, and the answer surprised me. Apparently the procedure is free and nothing is needed to be scanned. Anyone can walk in off the street and say that they want to be scanned to see what their activity is and the RCRM doesn't have the right to turn them away. They said that they usually just scan people on the chair scanner because the WBC takes so much power to run that they only scan people who are highly likely to have significant amounts of radionuclides, or those who are highly likely to be completely clean of Cesium. They said that part of that is because now many people don't want to be scanned, especially those who live in the contaminated areas. I was surprised and asked why. They said that at first people were willing to be scanned. Then over the years as their activity dropped and the government noticed that they had less activity, so they cut funding for them. So now the people don't want to be scanned because they're afraid (and rightly so) that they'll receive even less compensation from the government. The sad part is that over the next 10 years or so as cancer begins to appear more and more they'll need the help even more than before.
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2 comments:
Part of the clip is done with the worker silenced and you narrating and then it skips to where the worker is still audible in the background and you are still narrating. It kind of overlaps and makes it difficult to focus on your voice. At the end of the clip when the worker is telling the story, it may be better to have subtitles at that point. It gives you more of a story feeling. The RCRM looks like they have their act together. You are right; they are doing a great job working with what they have. Very interesting to see this documentary unfold, you’re doing a great job.
I had a couple of questions and comments regarding the clip.
- Why do they use the WBC for people who are completely clean of Cesium?
- The bus idea is fantastic. Very interesting…
- In the WBC you mentioned that they use a lot of steel as shielding coupled with some lead. Steel has a much lower Z than lead (26 vs. 82) so my question is why are they using steel? It is probably because it is cheaper and they already had it available to them from the decommissioned ships.
- The human phantom looks like a Rock-em Sock-em Robot!
- Interesting that they used peas from the exclusion zone. I guess there is no other real use for them.
- That is really cool that you were able to be scanned and they actually used it to help better their purpose.
Matt, first of all, thank you for your comments. Sorry about the audio/subtitles issue. I've been really pressed for time on these videos. These clips that I upload are not going into the documentary(ies) in the same format. I'm basically just uploading footage I've taken, clumped together into coherent groups. But you are right, I will need to make better decisions on the audio/subtitles issue.
To answer your questions and comments:
They use the WBC for people who are clean of Cesium for the same reason that they wanted to scan me. They need those kinds of scans to get a statistical approximation of how much of the Cesium peak (in people with Cesium) is contributed from the compton scatter of Potassium.
About the buses, they also have smaller mini-van like labs. They said that they should have some coming in for calibration before I leave and that they'll call me when they do so I can get some footage of them.
I think they are using steel because it was cheaper. I asked them why it wasn't lined with at least a little lead. They didn't line everything with lead because the steel is doing a decent job, and if they added more lead, there would be a larger lead x-ray peak. Since one of the goals of the phosvich detectors was to measure Am-241 (about 60keV), having a large lead x-ray peak at about 70-75 kev wouldn't be good.
I was told that I could actually eat the peas in the phantoms and it wouldn't really be a big deal because their activity is pretty low. It is large enough (in that quantity) to serve the purpose of a phantom.
Thanks for your comments, they're exactly the kind of constructive comments/criticism that I hoped to get from this blog.
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