Nuclear Scanning Catches a Radioactive Cat On I-5

Jeff recommends Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat's story from a community meeting with Northwest border control agents. Seems their monitoring for dirty bombs from the median of Interstate 5 caught a car transporting a radioactive cat. "It turns out the feds have been monitoring Interstate 5 for nuclear 'dirty bombs.' They do it with radiation detectors so sensitive it led to the following incident. 'Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour... Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope [in the passing car]. The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot.' Did he find a nuke? 'Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier.'"

I know the name of its owner....

Schrodinger

Poor thing...

I heard it hated to be observed.

Re:I know the name of its owner....

What was the cat's state?

Washington--which is a quantum superposition between Oregon and Canada.

Re:I know the name of its owner....

wait, that was supposed to say

'catatomic'

... and he ruins his own joke as usual.

Lolcat

Schrödinger cat is not amused

Re:Lolcat

Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.

There, I fixed that for you.

Ha, ha

Now, how do you explain that you've just had radiation treatment to the mindless TSA buffoon who's found you're radioactive?

asking for a tag

Please, please, please, somebody tag this catscan.

cool.

Did the cat have any superpowers?

Re:cool.

Its purr could attract law enforcement officials.

Re:cool.

I'M DA BOMB! LAWL!!

KTHXBAI

LOL @ Privacy Tag

Emitting nuclear radiation is the equivilent of shouting "hey, here, look in my vehicle. I've got something NUCLEAR!" No wonder there's no privacy. I'm sure if the vehicle was glowing no one would feel bad about them being pulled over. This just happens to glow in a very different way.

Re:LOL @ Privacy Tag

True, but since there are legitimate reasons for emitting radiation they should take that into account. The last thing people (or cats) undergoing radiation therapy for cancer need is to be stopped and searched on every corner

Look, an Isotope!

Signal went off and identified an isotope

Holy smokes! Isotopes [thefreedictionary.com] everywhere!

I'm surprised they needed a detector to find something that, by definition, comprises all of matter.

So let's say...

1. I'm remodeling my house. I go down to Home Despot/Slowes and buy a dozen smoke detectors. Would I get pulled over for being a suspected terrorist?

2. I'm a cancer patient undergoing radiation therapy. What can be done to prevent the horror of being pulled over by the KGB? Would it be reasonable to issue "radiology patient" tags, like they issue handicapped tags for the handicapped?

3. What is the false positive rate of such monitoring? Here, we have a cute example of a sick cat setting off a false positive. What about other incidents like this that fail to get into the newspaper?

Grump

Let's say, then:

1) Depends on the design of the detector. There's no chance the alpha particles from the Am-241 will be detected, as the cardboard box the smoke alarms are in will stop those, but the photons might be. The cat's scan residue (rimshot, please, along with everyone else in this discussion--but I would guess it's Tc-99 residue from a Tc-99m scan) was picked up by this detector system, so assumedly the Am-241 gammas might as well. That said, I don't know what activity is usually used smoke detectors (and I'm too lazy to look it up), or what activity is usually administered to cats during vet. nuclear med. procedures; questions like these are ones of quantity. You might well be stopped. From their perspective, you might well be buying twelve Am-241 sources to line the casing of a bomb.

2) I was under the impression that oncologists were in the habit of doing just that--giving "doctor's notes" to patients with outpatient implanted brachytherapy seeds or devices. Being treated with a linear accelerator would not be likely to leave a perceptible amount of radiation in your body (photoneutrons from high energy linacs might cause some activation, but I don't think that it's generally a serious concern as far as setting off radiation alarms). Would it also bother you that you might well set off radiation alarms at nuclear power plants, if you happened to work at one, while being treated for your cancer?

3) From a machine perspective, this was not a false positive. From a judicial/social standpoint, it was. I don't have much more to add beyond that.

That's an excellent coffee table story

Of course, it's not serious journalism to simply quote from a random funny story tossed out in an otherwise dull talk. Good speakers often have a collection of slightly oddball fake stories to put the audience at ease. Journalism means actually chasing up the story, interviewing the supposed cat's owner and the agent. If they actually exist, that is.

No Human in the car?

The summary says the car was populated by a "cat", but doesn't mention if there was a human driver. Either that, or the car was driven by a 60's beatnik with a fondness for Jazz music. "Hey dude, I just pulled over this radiocative cat, man, I mean he was smokin'."
Cosmic.

Radioactive Steel Rebar

I remember reading something about them discovering a truck loaded with contaminated steel at the gate of some federal facility. Sometimes radiation sources, like cobalt-60, get mixed in with scrap metal that is going to be recycled. The steel plants are scared to death that they will accidentally melt down a load of scrap that contains a radiation source, resulting in a lot of spoiled steel and a huge decontamination bill. They have their own radiation detectors to check incoming material.

The thing that worries me is...

... just how radioactive was this cat? If it's sufficiently radioactive to show up at quite a distance in a moving vehicle, how much full-body radiation are the people around the cat getting?

I do not want a hot cat sitting in my lap.

Re:doesn't add up

Actually I believe there have been lots of similar events. A friend of mine is a member of some service organization and was on a club outing to nearby Canada by coach. On the border crossing back to America, they were stopped at the crossing when the border guards told the driver to shut the coach down and they boarded it. The club members were apprehensive as they had been replenishing the club alcohol stash and had a bit more than the legal duty free limits in the storage areas.
The guards finally identified one older gentleman and questioned him, only to find out he had been a radiation trace injection four weeks previously. They were cleared and went on their way.
If they have this equipment at all the major crossings and on the interstates, imagine the cost and the amount of money that has been spent on these type of projects.

Re:doesn't add up

It has, just hasn't been widely reported. According to this article, there are about 600 radiation scanners deployed around the country and the rate of false positives is so high that the guy in charge of the Homeland Security Dept. nuclear office says they are pretty useless in practice:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,257004,00.html?sPage=fnc/specialsections/homelandsecurity [foxnews.com]

Re:Proper investigation

You never know with those feline terrorists.

Perhaps it was a persian cat? You can never be too careful with those Al-Qaeda supporters [mwcnews.net]

Re:Proper investigation

I assume they promptly cut the cat open

...and it would have been quite safe as well. After all, the cat had 18 half-lives.

Re:It's all fun and games...

I can see the interrogation now...

FBI goon: "What's the matter??? CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE?"