Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Mar 1
st, 2016 at 10:26am:
Chimp_Logic wrote on Mar 1
st, 2016 at 9:53am:
lets examine the lunacy in the limited Australian Nuclear safety sector. The ARPANSA gang have very interesting advise on how to dispose of small amounts of Am241 - an alpha emitter with a half life of over 400 years. Apparently people should only be concerned if 10 or more detectors need to be disposed of at once. Disposing of less than 10 detectors apparently entails NO RISK AT ALL.
Safe disposal of smoke detectors
Individual (or small numbers of) smoke alarms can be safely disposed of in domestic rubbish. The amount of radioactive material in each smoke alarm is extremely small. From environmental and public health perspectives, the disposal of individual smoke alarms with domestic rubbish does not represent any risk.
When more than ten smoke alarms (or more particularly, the Americium-241 sources) are collected together for bulk disposal, they must be treated as radioactive waste, and the requirements of the National Health and Medical Research Council's Code of Practice for the Near-Surface Disposal of Radioactive Waste in Australia (1992) must be met. Contact your state or territory radiation control authority for advice.http://www.arpansa.gov.au/radiationprotection/factsheets/is_smokedetector.cfm Dont worry Chimp dont ingest or inhale your smoke detector you should be fine.
so according to ARPANSA, disposing of 10 or more smoke detectors at one time, becomes a legal and medical nuclear waste issue to be dealt by authorities.
And yet communities around Australia can dump thousands of smoke detectors collectively into the local municipal rubbish dump.
I am sure that the supremely sealed containers of Am241 will survive 10 to 20 half lifes - what's a mere 4,320 to 8,640 years?
there should not be any leakage into the immediate ground water OR any bio-accumulation in the ecosystem.
Flojack guarantees this for up to 8,000 years
Well done mate.
There are almost 10 million homes in Australia and perhaps even more commercial buildings etc. Although the Am241 content in each smoke detector is small (~0.0002 grams), the cumulative effect of disposal needs to be taken into consideration.
Good luck - humans know everything and know exactly what they are doing - especially if corporate and Banking profits are involved
Well done everybody - well done