Word: geigers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Technicians deployed their Geiger counters to check the level of radioactivity. Report: no danger. Reason: nuclear bombs have been painstakingly designed so that they cannot function unless they go through a complex arming process, and the Air Force is not likely to fly with armed nuclear bombs this side of the Iron Curtain or the Pole...
...Allen package" of instruments assembled by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is designed to measure three things: cosmic rays, micrometeorites, and the temperature of the satellite itself. The cosmic-ray counter is a Geiger-Mueller tube that gives a signal whenever 32 rays have passed through it. It began performing normally as soon as the bird was launched...
...commonest kind of radioisotope is any element (gold, cobalt, strontium) that has been placed inside a reactor long enough to become radioactive, i.e., to shoot off alpha, beta or gamma rays. Then, when these rays hit another object, their speed or intensity changes; by using Geiger counters and other devices to detect the rays, technicians can learn many filings' about the objects under bombardment. And when isotopes are added to liquids, their flow can easily be followed by Geiger counters...
...Thyroids. Inspectors armed with Geiger counters and chemical test apparatus swarmed over the dairy farms, testing grass, cows, milk and eggs. At first everything looked all right, but after a few days, inspectors reported samples of fresh milk spiked with radioactive iodine 131. The cows of Geiger Gulch were eating contaminated grass, and the concentration of iodine 131 in their milk and thyroid glands was building up. No sample was found to be really dangerous, but as a precaution, all milk from 150 farms was ordered dumped. Later the embargo was extended to 1,000 more farms...
Mothers near Geiger Gulch switched their children to orange juice, and scrubbed them all over twice a day. Coal miners' unions worried about the air blown down their mine shafts. The big city of Manchester (pop. some 700,000) worried about its water, which comes from the edge of Geiger Gulch. Beef cattle sent to market from the region were marked with yellow paint so their thyroids would be destroyed right after slaughter. No one has been damaged yet (except the plant worker who was shaved), but all Britain has had a disquieting look at a kind of accident...