Re: Radon and Static charges

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 12:18 PM 6/12/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Which brings me to ponder another question.
>
>Could the radon progeny be attracted to plastic carts, with a large 
>amount of plastic bags in them, if there was a buildup of static 
>charge in the plastic?

Certainly. Almost every synthetic material seems to be disposed to building
static charge on its surface and becomes a candidate for attracting
radioactive material.

The most extreme case of this that I have seen is the person carrying a
plastic bag of non-rad trash through a nuclear plant. It seems that a hot
particle in a nearby contamination area jumped onto the bag and was carried
a considerable distance before the bag was put down on a metal grating.
This discharged the accumulated static charge, and the particle fell off,
leaving the particle in a location far from any possible point of origin.
It is just this phenomenon that led nuclear plants staffs to refer to hot
particles as fleas.


Bob Flood
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(415) 926-3793     bflood@slac.stanford.edu
Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are mine alone.