While it's probably a good idea to be conservative where radiation is concerned, I'm surprised no study like this had ever been done before. This is also a big blow to the Linear No Threshold model of exposure.
But that's how regulations go. Take concrete quantifiable data and then create an arbitrary barrier around it. Someone probably saw the numbers and then said...'just to be save, we'll buffer that by about 50X.'
Yup. I got delayed on my flight yesterday because the plane was 25 lbs too heavy. Now, while I am all about saftey, I doubt that 25 lbs would have made the plane fall out of the sky. So I just teleconferenced my meeting, but still...
Edit: my previous post should have been "Just to be safe."
The thing is, those regs were based on acute doses, not long term ones. Yes, regs should be heavily buffered, but not when the buffer is based on inappropriate data.
Basically, your cells can repair x amount of damage very easily if it's spread across a year, but given all at once, it overwhelms the repair mechanisms.
And the study didn't even go high enough to find the threshold where long term exposure is hazardous, so the limit might be 80 or 100 times too low.
Hey, here's a random question: does anyone know how to calculate the destructive shockwave radius from a given amount of C4? Google is being useless for me right now.
Without clicking source because it's too late to be looking up hardcore math; I know C4 is a 1.30 and TNT is a 1.0 (though I forget what that's a measurement of), how would that change the equation? And how much delta p is required to blow out a window? What I really need is an equation that leaves r as the variable.
0.05 kg/cm^2 of delta p will blow out a window. One Bar = 100,000 N/m^2. And the equation for the time it takes for the blast front to propagate is 1.3*q^(1/6)*r^0.5 *10^-3.
For the record, to do work in explosives regarding determining physical properties, e.g. modeling the initiation/propagation of the detonation sequence (which, I might add, has yet to be done), is not classified. You don't need a clearance. I only know this, because I had a sit down with someone that does this stuff (looking to get into the field), and he flat out told me any work I do is unclassified, until such time as the DoD decides that it needs to be.
It's not about whether something is classified or not. You could very easily get online and look up all sorts of stuff that's unclassified but could also still be seen as suspicious. For example, records on all train derailments in the US are publicly available, but if you seem overly interested in them and it's not part of your job, people might begin to wonder if perhaps you want to derail a train.
If an FBI Agent can get away with having the email "pedodave69@yahoo.com" without being caught until someone else flips on him. I think being interested in the blast radius of C4 is relatively tame.
