Your phone could reveal your radiation exposure after a nuclear disaster

[Judi Lynn]

Testing personal electronics could help people who need lifesaving treatment get it faster
BY MARIA TEMMING 6:00AM, JANUARY 14, 2019

In the event of a nuclear attack or accident, personal electronics could be repurposed as radiation detectors.

A ceramic insulator found in many devices, such as cell phones and fitness trackers, gives off a glow under high heat that reveals its past nuclear radiation exposure, researchers report in the February Radiation Measurements. That insight may allow experts to gauge someone’s radiation dose in a matter of hours, whereas typical blood tests can take weeks.

“Everybody panics when it comes to radiation,” says study coauthor Robert Hayes, a nuclear engineer at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Quickly estimating people’s risk of radiation-related sickness after a nuclear disaster could help triage emergency medical treatment.

When nuclear radiation floods the ceramic in electronic components called surface mount resistors, the radiation rearranges the distribution of electrons in defects in the ceramic’s crystalline structure. If heated to hundreds of degrees Celsius, the ceramic glows, and the wavelengths of light that make up that luminescence reveal the material’s electron distribution. From there, researchers can determine the dose of radiation that caused the material’s electron reshuffling.

More:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/phones-reveal-radiation-exposure-after-nuclear-disaster?tgt=nr

[True Dough]

1. Is there a

impending nuclear disaster that you're not telling us about, Judi Lynn???

[TrogL]

5. I'm expecting a Reichstag fire "justifying" Trump nuking North Korea

[Stargazer09]

2. That's really interesting!

However, I would much prefer that the experiments to be the only way this gets tested.

I’m not too crazy about a real nuclear disaster happening.

[marble falls]

3. Not much of a consolation.

[ROB-ROX]

4. Thermal Luminance Dosimeters (TLD)

Since the 70' TLD have been used instead of film to monitor exposure to radiation. The dosimeter is placed in an oven with a light detector to record the exposure. My laboratory had 8,000 employees which had their dosimeters exchanged monthly (radiation worker) quarterly, annually (office worker.) I always questions doctors who love to radiate people. CHEER

[NNadir]

6. It's too bad that phones don't report the crap you're breathing while anticipating a...

...nuclear disaster.

Of course, the fact that 7 million people die each year from air pollution pales against the possibility that your phone can tell you whether or not how you'll fare in a type of disaster that has killed fewer people than aircraft crashes, automobile crashes, and eating too much McDonald's.