Abstract
Many radiation accidents in the fields of medicine and technology are caused by losses and careless disposal of radioactive material. The reason for unnecessary exposures is frequently due to improper storage of disused radioactive sources. Unused sources have been found in scrapyards where they were ‘discovered’ by children, who were fond of finding pieces of e.g. good-looking silver-gray cobalt metal, which, in fact, was highly radioactive and dangerous. Table 14.1 shows a number of examples of losses of radioactive sources and events of accidental irradiations.
“Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.”
W. Churchill 1874–1965 (about the development of nuclear bombs 1945)
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© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Grupen, C. (2010). Radiation Accidents. In: Introduction to Radiation Protection. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02586-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02586-0_14
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