Re: Five injured in blast near Japan nuke facility-Earlier Accident

[Jim Muckerheide <jmuckerheide@delphi.com>]

I guess either proximity to a nuclear facility is more dangerous than the
nuclear facility (5 vs. 3); or oxygen should be banned! :-)

Regards, Jim
muckerheide@mediaone.net
========================

RadiumProj@cs.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 3/10/00 10:19:00 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> sandyfl@earthlink.net writes:
> 
> << The midday explosion at the Institute for Environmental Sciences in
>  Aomori Prefecture, about 580 km (360 miles) northeast of Tokyo, took
>  place about a mile (1.5 km) away from low-level nuclear waste storage
>  facility and nuclear reprocessing complex .
> 
>  The research institute deals with radioactive materials, but the
>  blast occured in a facility which does not keep such material, a
>  police officer said.
> 
>  Researchers were apparently pouring liquid oxygen into an
>  experimental device  >>
> =========================
> Radsafers:
> 
> Hmmm. Interesting. We've all heard of guilt by association. Now we have guilt
> by proximity
> 
> BTW, back about 1991 a graduate student in the Dept. of Oceanography at the
> Univ. RI suffered a tragic injury due to an accident involved in transferring
>  liquid nitrogen into an older style gamma spec dewar.
> 
> The URI dewar exploded during filling with LN2 due to the glass liner
> breaking. There was an outer metal case. When the LN2 spilled from the dewar
> and  hit the ambient temp. wall it flashed to gas and being an older style
> dewar which did not have blowout plugs, the pressure buildup caused a severe
> explosion that actually destroyed the lab in which it was located. The grad
> student ended up in critical condition and lost his hand or entire forearm [I
> can't recall all the details] due to the shrapnel which flew off in the
> explosion.
> 
> Anyone using older style LN2 or LOX cooled detectors of any type should
> assess if their systems might be subject to such a serious accident which can
> be life threatening.
> 
> Stewart Farber
> Public Health Sciences
> email: radiumproj@cs.com
> ========================
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