Use of nuclear technology gets green light in Rwanda

Re:Use of nuclear technology gets green light in Rwanda by skissane on Thursday June 18, 2020 @04:44PM (#23567801)

If they had a basic understanding of radioactivity, they would have realised the object was likely radioactive (any strangely warm or glowing object probably is), stayed away from it, and they would have been in a far better place. Their injuries were from choosing to expose themselves to it for hours on end (as a heat source), as opposed to the brief initial exposure of discovery.

When I was a kid my dad told me a story about people finding glowing objects and taking them home and giving their whole family radiation poisoning. (In hindsight, I think he was probably describing the Goiânia accident in Brazil in 1987, which would have been recently in the media at the time he warned me). Like most people, I never found any glowing object but if I ever did I would have known to leave it be, get the hell out of there, and then call the authorities.

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Re:Use of nuclear technology gets green light in Rwanda by gambiting on Friday June 19, 2020 @04:22AM (#23572305)

Yeah it's crazy since it happened "recently" - only in 2001. I'm guessing that if they were growing up in Georgia in 60-70s, they received very little to no education. Still, it's mind boggling that someone would find a randomly hot object in the woods and not think it's at least a little bit dangerous. There's nothing in normal life that behaves like this, it should ring that self preservation alarm bell.

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