Sextan (36 photos)

A very beautiful thing - it’s called a sextant (or sextant), whoever likes it better calls it that. Often found in the apartments of experienced sea wolves as a wall toy. The scales of devices produced before the 70s are made using continuous phosphor (SPD) based on radium-226 salts. The dose rate of gamma radiation is visible on the device.

Safety: you can do whatever you want within a meter from the device.

Danger: the possibility of contamination of hands, clothes and anything else you want with radium and its daughter decay products (DPR). The main thing is that radon gas, which is released from this device, will enter the lungs and there will be happiness, especially in the apartment where the device will hang.
What you should absolutely not do: grab it with your bare hands, disassemble it, peel off the paint and quickly drag it home.
What to do: Call Rospotrebnadzor or the Ministry of Emergency Situations or the Ministry of Internal Affairs and clearly explain what they found and where - your presence is not necessary after the arrival of any of the above structures.

Icing sensor type RIO-3. It can be found at airfields, repair shops and even on the roof of your house. Contains a very decent source of strontium-90.

The dosimeter senses it already on the meter. What to do and not to do - see above. The only pleasant thing about this device is that if it is not destroyed, then you can protect yourself with a screen, no gas is released, there will be no pollution...

Diver's watch. Everything that can be said about them is said in the section about the sextant.

But this little thing, which also contains SPD with radium-226 for a generally unclear purpose...

Here is an interesting exhibit... It may be found in military locations, civil defense units, NBC protection units, and generally just in scrap metal - the dimensions may be different - larger, but the shape is approximately the same. Inside there is a source based on cesium-137.

I warn you - you shouldn’t meddle with such a thing even at a distance closer than a meter. The dose rate per centimeter from such sources can be calculated at 1 or more roentgens per hour. (in the picture - 1,2) Such sources were (and are) used in calibration rulers for checking dosimeters. I had the opportunity to pull out a similar one from scrap metal with a dose rate per 1 centimeter of more than 5000 (why inaccurate - because there was no device that would measure more than 5000) roentgens per hour, a dosimeter type PM1203-04 choked 7 meters from it...

Laboratory containers. Anything could be inside.

The top one was found behind the garages on December 30 last year.

The guy below used it as an anchor for a boat and went fishing...

The upper one was empty, but in the lower one there was a source...

These things are attachments for sighting devices of a Kalashnikov assault rifle for shooting at night. The same SPD based on radium-226 was used. They are found in large numbers in small arms depots. Dose rate per centimeter is up to 6 milliroentgen per hour...

I don’t know what it is - the photo was sent from Barnaul, but according to them the light was not bad.

These things used to glow in the dark, and were installed in such pipes. The purpose of the pipes is not known for certain, there are only guesses - to indicate dimensions at night, they are found often and everywhere, even in the Republic of Korea.. They contain radium-based SPD.

This thing had the same things on it - but it was easier; it had a nameplate with the name - "Cross beam for lifting..."

This miracle is nothing more than a block of type E gamma source.
E - probably because it was Estonian, produced at the Tallinn Instrument-Making Plant, sold by all ISOTOPES in the country (including Tashkent)

There are 4 types - E-1M, E-2M, E-3M, E-4M.

The lightest is 4 - about 40 kilograms, and 1 - 160. A serious thing - the dose rate in a beam from it at 1 meter can reach 1.5 - 2 roentgens per hour. Cesium-137.

Attention!!! similar things can be found even in places where radiation has only been heard of by hearsay - here is a small list of places where they were seen:

Mines, boiler rooms, conveyor lines of mining and processing industries, bunkers, cement plants, crushing plants, water tanks, conveyors of distilleries, laboratories...

True or not - unknown, nude - they say they even stood on the tram tracks on steep slopes - to automatically turn on the braking system...

Rarity!!!

If the eyewitness, who is also the victim and the defendant is not lying, then this is the watch from Henkel, shot down in 1942 near Moscow.

He swears that he knocked it down and dug it up himself... I think he’s lying.

These things can be bought online.

SPD with radium, but here’s the paradox - our ’72 releases no longer glow - but these ones are still quite functional... The Germans did it conscientiously...

Smoke detector

Here is a photo of a RID-1 type smoke detector crushed by a tractor:

RID-1 contains three sources - 2 types of ADI for plutonium-239 and another one for nickel-63...

After crushing, the area of contamination was about 1 square meter, the flux density of alpha radiation was up to 3000 decays...

Mortar sight:

We found 56 pieces - EDR - up to 2.5 mR/h, year of manufacture - from 1946 to 1958.

Sight for a 45 mm gun of the 1942 model.

There was one sight, 1953 MED, also at 2.5

Artillery compass. The brand and year of birth are not known, since I will only find a piece.

General view of the collected goods:

And here’s another thing - this thing is from the LUCH-1 gamma-therapeutic device, year of manufacture - 1968. Half a ton of depleted uranium. Inside is cobalt-60. Activity - 4800 Curie. The thing is pleasant in all respects.

In this photo we see how a folk craftsman, also a minstrel and troubadour, made a pedal for a drum from an ordinary ship's telephone made in 1958, containing an SPD with radium-226 (DER - 3.8 mR/h).

With this pedal I went on tour to China and was detained at customs... The pedal was confiscated, the troubadour was reprimanded...

But they caught it in scrap metal. BGI-60 - purpose - the same as "E" - see above. The source used is cesium-137, activity is about 0.2 Curie - DER at 1 cm from the source is about 200 R/h.

From the block - 4 mR/h... They weigh - 56 kg, so someone sold them for scrap...

As they say when talking about objects containing certain radioactive substances...

It is no secret that the vast majority of military and civil defense radiation monitoring and alarm devices contain calibration radiation sources in their device or spare parts...

Ignorance of this fact, as well as a careless attitude towards such devices, can lead to very unpleasant consequences!!!!!!

As an example, I can cite a case in one well-known and frequently visited bombar by people from Kavesa, where narrow-minded guest workers dismantled a huge amount of dosimetric equipment for non-ferrous metal, including the “DP-64 indicator-signaling device”

What happened to the fairly powerful beta source is not known for certain, but after the discovery of the opened housing of the device’s sensor, the desire to visit this place naturally disappeared!!!!

Absolutely in the hole, as one of my friends says!

In the radiation monitoring equipment (RAC) that was produced earlier, control sources were (and are) used.
In DP-5, DP-64 there are sources based on strontium-90 type B-8.

In KDU of various types - blenders on the same strontium of types T-1, T-4, T-17, T-20.

In devices such as KDG-1, KRB-1, sources such as CO have the same strontium, here are their photos (unfortunately, the first two are not there - they need to be taken and posted)

This is it in a protective container

This is a rear view of the source itself - in front the active layer is covered with thin aluminum foil.

This source was found at the post office last December

The activity of such sources is relatively low - from 104 to 107, but there is a possibility of depressurization and then we have a real danger of strontium contamination of everything we want, but if we say that strontium is very well absorbed by the body and replaces calcium in the bones, then we get a very happy picture. ..