Hmmm.

Exclusive: Russian Doctors Say They Weren’t Warned Patients Were Nuclear Accident Victims

As more information dribbles out about the recent Russian missile explosion that released radiation of an undefined sort, this story is kinda interesting. There is some hey-didn’t-I-see-that-sort-of-thing-on-that-Chernobyl-show level paranoid bureaucracy skullduggery going on with doctors not being given all the facts, but one of the more interesting bits is that one of the doctors who treated the incident victims was found to have cesium 137 in his muscle tissue. There are a whole lot of useful bits of data left out here, such as how *much* cesium 137 and whether he could have picked it up elsewhere or whether any of the many other doctors and nurses involved were also contaminated with cesium 137. Given how often cesium 137 shows up in lower left nuclear incidents, such as industrial radioactive sources being simply lost or misplaced, it’s entirely possible that that one doctor came across it somewhere else. But if the doctor was contaminated internally to an important degree by a victim flown in from hundreds of mils from the incident site, it would indicate that there must be a *lot* of cesium 137 floating about. because cesium 137 would be an odd substance here. It’s a byproduct of the fission of U-235, but you’d imagine that uranium would be the bigger story if that was the source. It’s not seemingly terribly useful for military applications.

Cesium 137 is a beta emitter; it’s pretty much useless in a reactor, though I imagine someone clever might be able to find a way to harness the beta emissions somehow. It won;t make a bomb, though you might turn very fine powder into a cladding for a dirty bomb. Cesium salts are water soluble and play hell with biological systems since it infiltrates easily. But it’s actual practical uses in industry all seem kinda pointless for a missile:

Caesium-137 has a number of practical uses. In small amounts, it is used to calibrate radiation-detection equipment.[5] In medicine, it is used in radiation therapy.[5] In industry, it is used in flow meters, thickness gauges,[5] moisture-density gauges (for density readings, with americium-241/beryllium providing the moisture reading),[6] and in gamma ray well logging devices.[6]

I *suppose* it might have been used in a propellant flow meter for a rocket engine? Maybe?

I’m no nuclear expert, but for the life of me I can’t come up with a good use for the stuff.