A new haul

[Tom Jennings]

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005, Mike Cesari wrote:

> A particle accelerator could do it. (Think SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator)
> or the Tevatron at Fermilab.) Low-level radiation (alpha particle emission),
> but enough to alert site safety people and require enough DOT paperwork to
> shield the device. Stuff like this generally sits for a few years until the
> levels go down to background.

But seeing how alpha particles don't travel far outside of a
vacuum (what, 7cm? in air) I don't see how that does it. Short of
being next to a damaged reactor core, eg. for a lot of neutrons,
the only thing that could contaminate gear is a big leak, spray,
dusting, etc of something radioactive.

I do understand that "exposure" could mean essentially a
"bureaucratic" exposure amounting to only a *potential*
contamination, subsequent quarrentine, etc, but the posting did
say that a PDP-8 was "radioactive".