Serendipitous Radiation Monitors

By Robert Fleischer

Past radiation doses can be measured by studying the tracks that speeding particles have left in ordinary solids—detectors that just happened to be there

Medicine Physics Technology

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July-August 2002

Volume 90, Number 4
Page 324

DOI: 10.1511/2002.27.324

On the last day of September 1999, harried technicians at the Japan Nuclear Fuel Conversion Company in Tokaimura made a grave mistake: They inadvertently let a uranium-rich solution they were processing attain critical mass. The nuclear chain reaction that ensued released a flood of gamma rays and neutrons on the unprepared workers.

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