An urgent warning to stay meters away from a button-battery sized object somewhere along a 1,400 km road? Seems kind of pointless.
DFES Country North chief superintendent David Gill said there would be "challenges" in locating such a small object.
Wouldn't the radioactivity make finding such a small object far, far easier? It looks like the road is two lanes with a dirt shoulder. Couldn't they get a truck, mount several geiger counters on a pole long enough to sweep the road and shoulder, and drive the road looking for a spike in radiation?
Honestly it's likely one of those things you'd have to test so see what your sensitivity and detection radius is.
If it stayed on or very near the road, I would expect it could be detected this way.
Now, if it washed off the road in a storm, well good luck.
And then you also must consider the natural background rate of radioactivity across that enormous area. Crank your sensitivity up too high to gain range and you might just detect radon or potassium, or whatever else is out there decaying.
And then you also must consider the natural background rate of radioactivity across that enormous area. Crank your sensitivity up too high to gain range and you might just detect radon or potassium, or whatever else is out there decaying.
Yeah. I would think they'd look for localized "spikes", then follow that up with an on-the-ground search. They don't need to eliminate all false positives.
My idea is to have multiple Geiger counters spread across a 10+ meter pole. Since what they're looking for is small and localized, they could control for varying natural radiation by looking for a spikes that don't affect all the sensors equally.
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An urgent warning to stay meters away from a button-battery sized object somewhere along a 1,400 km road? Seems kind of pointless.
Wouldn't the radioactivity make finding such a small object far, far easier? It looks like the road is two lanes with a dirt shoulder. Couldn't they get a truck, mount several geiger counters on a pole long enough to sweep the road and shoulder, and drive the road looking for a spike in radiation?
The article throws out the possibility that it's now lodged in somebody's tire, so it could be sitting in some random Australian's driveway instead.
I assume that's the reason for the announcement.
Honestly it's likely one of those things you'd have to test so see what your sensitivity and detection radius is.
If it stayed on or very near the road, I would expect it could be detected this way.
Now, if it washed off the road in a storm, well good luck.
And then you also must consider the natural background rate of radioactivity across that enormous area. Crank your sensitivity up too high to gain range and you might just detect radon or potassium, or whatever else is out there decaying.
Yeah. I would think they'd look for localized "spikes", then follow that up with an on-the-ground search. They don't need to eliminate all false positives.
My idea is to have multiple Geiger counters spread across a 10+ meter pole. Since what they're looking for is small and localized, they could control for varying natural radiation by looking for a spikes that don't affect all the sensors equally.