File talk:Adrian Fluoroscope operating controls.jg.jpg

Description: "The device was highly radioactive and had to be sent to Ottawa for decommissioning, which took months." This claim has inaccuracies. (I accept that it probably went to Ottawa, and that it probably took months (though it shouldn't have).)

X-ray generators are completely non-radioactive when powered off, and they do not make things radioactive or become radioactive through use. (Exception: ~10 megavolt or above can make things radioactive and become radioactive.)

Radioactive isotopes remain radioactive, but there is no reason to include an isotope gamma-ray source in an instrument that contains an electronic x-ray source (x-ray generator). Before 1945, strong isotope sources were not available; there was only refined natural radium. Fluorescent images made by isotope sources are generally too dim to view, and require minutes or hours even to darken sensitive photographic film.

So this unit could not have been "radioactive". Unless someone hid some radium in it (unlikely), or if the unit (and the shoe store) received unrelated radioactive contamination (has never happened).

Items removed from the unit could have required special handling as non-radioactive toxic waste, if it contained a beryllium window or PCB oil.

So I changed the description to the actual problem and the obvious remedy.

Description: "The device emitted lots of radiation when operated, so it was sent to Ottawa, where it was rendered harmless by removing the x-ray tube head."

-A876 (talk) 23:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC) -A876 (talk) 18:12, 30 April 2016 (UTC)