Goiânia accident

[Alan]

The Goiânia accident was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, at Goiânia, in the Brazilian State of Goiás. Considered one of the worst nuclear disasters in history,[1] it took place after an old radiotherapy source was scavenged from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths and radioactive contamination of 245 other people.[2] The dispersal of radiation was equivalent to a medium-size dirty bomb.[3]

Afterwards, about 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination; 249 were found to have significant levels of radioactive material in or on their body.[2] Of this group 129 persons had internal contamination. The majority of the internally contaminated persons only suffered small doses (< 50 mSv, less than a 1 in 400 risk of getting cancer as a result).

A thousand persons were identified as having suffered a dose which was greater than one year of background radiation; it is thought that 97% of these people had a dose of between 10 and 200 mSv (between a 1 in 2000 and a 1 in 100 risk of developing cancer as a result).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident

Goes to show it's not only nuclear power plants that have the potential for widespread lethal contamination.....

 

[BCO]

I read about this a couple of weeks back. Pretty hectic story.

 

[Alan]

Crash testing nuclear "flasks"

[video=youtube;as3VQeYfd2c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as3VQeYfd2c&feature=related[/video]

 

[Sonic2k]

Hi folks

I learnt about this accident several years ago. I have amassed much technical documentation about the accident, and I am therefore fully conversant with every detail of it.
You can either ask me questions or we could set up a repository to share the PDF documents and books I have collected about this incident.