Hee hee....funny you should mention that, Bruce......

We did a REFTRA in Gitmo back in 66 aboard USS Everglades (AD-24).
She was an old WW2/Korean War destroyer tender with a single screw
turned by two steam turbines and 4 boilers.

The inspectors came into my little cal lab and broke a tube marked
"radioactive" on the deck and said, "Broken Radioactive Tube!", to
which we were supposed to respond with this silly kit to put tape on
the remnants and seal it all up in a can for disposal, probably with
major reactor parts.

Ol' Larry whips out his radiation counter from a nearby bin, passes it
over the tube guts and declares it non-radioactive....sweeps it up and
dumps it in the sh!tcan.....(c;

"OK, smart boy, I'll be back!", declares the 1st class PO doing the
test......

That poor guy broke half the tubes on the ship, all the way up to the
major hydrogen thyratrons out of radars we didn't even have trying to
find a tube that would make my geiger counter show SOME
reaction.....NO-GO.

He finally says, "Well, if we COULD have found a radioactive tube,
what would you have done?" "Oh, now you ask. I'd have got out this
kit (producing kit from its place) and done this.", I declared.

I didn't have the heart to tell him NONE of the tube PARTS is
radioactive....just the gas that WAS in it before he broke it. The
gas was gone so it was a non-issue.....(c;

Try it for yourself. Get a hydrogen thyratron that's been firing a
10MW beast for a few years and measure it for yourself.

I don't know where NAV gets these crazy, paranoid ideas.....(sigh)

The big klystrons and maggies stop radiating Xrays as soon as you turn
'em off, too. Asst Chief Engineer at WTAT-24, our Fox affiliate
running 5MW ERP from a 160KW UHF transmitter has 2 klystrons over 7'
tall to the top of the boiler that cools 'em. They run 'em until the
filament fails at $32K/copy.....



On Fri, 05 Mar 2004 18:58:27 GMT, Bruce in Alaska
wrote:

In article ,
(Larry W4CSC) wrote:

protected by a gas tube

That had a tiny bit of Strontium 90 in it to set a bias
for the Ionization of the T/R tube. Couldn't just toss
those Bad Boys in the trash, as they were a Radiation
Hazard if the were broke open.

Bruce in alaska
--
add a 2 before @


Larry W4CSC
POWER is our friend!