Re: Radium where you least expect

[Charles Thomas <chatho@roadrunner.com>]

One of my associates at the State University of New Yory at Buffalo had qa
radium dfial wrist watch that he used to check portable monitors.  It would
drive the hand and foot monitor at the research reactor site nuts. It waas
anold one with mechanical registers and it would make them chatter.



At 11:01 AM 6/3/96 -0500, Merritt, Kim D          7714 M wrote:
>I hate to rehash an old thread or beat a dead horse but there are apparently 
>many RADSAFE users still associated with the Navy.  Another source of Radium 
>is the ships compass, at least on surface ships.  I don't know the activity 
>present but I recall being able to detect it with 2"x2" NaI detector through 
>a wall.  We also found an alarm clock this way.  In addition we had several 
>hand-held compasses that contained tritium in Curie quantities.  These were 
>stored in our Radioactive Materials Area but once again no surveys for 
>tritium performed.  I don't know how susceptible compasses are to leakage 
>but it does raise an interesting question.
>
>These opinions are mine, all mine!!
>Kim D. Merritt
>kdmerri@sandia.gov
>
>
Charles C. (Tommy) Thomas