What Is Going on with All This Radioactive Shrimp?

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

riffraff

129 points

28 comments

consumerreports.orgResearchstory

calmnegative

Debate

60/100

Food SafetyRadioactive ContaminationSupply Chain Transparency

Key topics

Food Safety

Radioactive Contamination

Supply Chain Transparency

The article discusses a recent recall of radioactive shrimp and the potential causes of the contamination, with commenters raising concerns about supply chain transparency and the investigation process.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

46m

Peak period

120-132h

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Comment distribution21 data points

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Based on 21 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Oct 11, 2025 at 12:31 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Oct 11, 2025 at 1:16 AM EDT
46m after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
10 comments in 120-132h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Oct 16, 2025 at 8:11 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

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Discussion (28 comments)

Showing 21 comments of 28

comrade1234

3 months ago

1 reply

> “easiest explanation” is that a medical or industrial device containing cesium-137 was inadvertently reprocessed as scrap metal. The radioactive material could have become gaseous after entering the PMT furnace and then been released from the facility’s smokestack

pixl97

3 months ago

1 reply

Which is highly concerning in itself. A ban on any steel imports from that country should happen immediately and strict requirements on preprocess detection and post process radiation levels should be put in place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez_cobalt-60_c...

Is the classic example of what happens when you don't do rad checking at the foundry. You can end up with a highly radiated piece that ends up right beside someone for half their life giving them cancer the entire time.

potato3732842

3 months ago

What kind of hyperbolic alarmism is this? You don't need to ban anything. Just scan it for radioactivity. Radiation is a lot easier to detect than any other contamination because it pretty much announces itself.

The radiation levels we're talking about here are so low that you could make a bed frame out of it and it'd be fine.

ggm

3 months ago

1 reply

Half life tracking presumably would give a "birthday" for the cesium-137 source. Given they suspect scrap contamination in a recycling smelter, its at best informing to root cause. That, and the length of the tail yet to come as it passes down the ladder.

addaon

3 months ago

4 replies

“Half life tracking” isn’t really a thing — decay is a memory-less process (by definition), so there’s no distinction in decay rate between a lot of old Cesium 137, and a bit of young Cesium 137. The way to put an age on the contamination is by looking at the ratio of Cesium 137 and Barium 137, which presumedly someone has done…

jgalt212

3 months ago

1 reply

For similar reasons, Carbon Dating is relatively low precision.

nisegami

3 months ago

I don't think it's the same situation, since there's a rough baseline rate of carbon-14 in nature (relative to carbon-12) which is continually replenished while alive. When it dies, there's no more carbon-14 added to the system, so we can determine how much is "left" from the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12. But there was no fixed % of ceaseium-137 to start with here, so we can't use the current % to determine age.

perihelions

3 months ago

> "by looking at the ratio of Cesium 137 and Barium 137, which presumedly someone has done…"

That's impractical; the decay product Ba-137 is stable and already present in much larger amounts, compared against which the Cs-137 decay products are undetectable.

ggm

3 months ago

Thank you for clarifying. My intent was where you get to, badly understood and expressed.

klodolph

3 months ago

(Decay isn’t memory-less by definition, but we’ve empirically observed that it’s memory-less, and our current theories model it as memory-less. This is the opposite of “by definition”—“by observation” or “empirically”.)

sierra1011

3 months ago

1 reply

This is a dupe from like, last week.

bell-cot

3 months ago

1 reply

Actually, it's from HN's Second Chance Pool:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

https://news.ycombinator.com/pool

Vs. you can click on the "(consumerreports.org)" link in the title, to quickly see if something is an actual duplicate submission.

Also notice how the "X [hours|days] ago" text changes, depending on context. Vs. the mouseover timestamp for that is always the original submission time.

sierra1011

3 months ago

Hah, thanks for sharing this, TIL.

I just remembered the headline from a few days ago and (on mobile) could not find it again, coming to the incorrect conclusion. Mea culpa.

perihelions

3 months ago

1 reply

What was the local impact of this pollution incident?

> "Some of the highest levels of contamination detected in the area were reportedly found in the company’s furnace, which is about 1.5 miles southwest of the BMS Foods facility where the shrimp was processed. Investigators think that radioactive dust was released into the environment after PMT inadvertently smelted scrap metal containing cesium-137. “Because it’s airborne, the contamination can be carried by wind,”..."

sampo

3 months ago

> Radiation scans revealed at least 22 plants in the industrial zone were contaminated. The Indonesian taskforce did not name the 21 other production facilities, but said they would immediately undergo decontamination procedures conducted by Indonesia’s nuclear agency.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/09/radioactive-sh...

8ig8

3 months ago

Fun, short podcast covering the topic last time it was in the news...

https://www.riskyornot.co/episodes/815-radioactive-shrimp

> Risky or Not? Radioactive Shrimp

> Dr. Don and Professor Ben talk about the risks of eating shrimp impacted by the recent recall.

zarzavat

3 months ago

See also: Prachin Buri radiation incident. It's unclear what, if any, link there is between the two incidents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prachin_Buri_radiation_inciden...

https://qz.com/thailand-radioactive-cylinder-found-foundry-1...

burnt-resistor

3 months ago

Protectionist regimes and opaque supply chains that aim to maximize profits above all else aren't motivated to provide honest answers, only a least-damaging public relations narrative.

nobodyandproud

3 months ago

Great, transparent investigation by the Indonesian authorities.

sampo

3 months ago

Wikipedia page doesn't have any estimates on when the contamination event might have started (so products processed before that would be safe). It only tells that the food recall in the US started 2 months ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_radioactive_shrimp_recall

JoelMcCracken

3 months ago

So, as an aside, I think consumer reports could do so much to embrace the digital era and access new generations of consumers.

My parents read it regularly, and I subscribed for a year or two about a decade ago and felt so strongly how it hadn’t seemed to change since I was a kid in 1990s. And as I’m deep in tech, I feel the lack of content and communication.

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