[quote=davefairtex]It would seem to the untutored mind that you gave me all the information required in the paragraph immediately preceeding the question! I have two types of shielding - skin, and clothing. Once I use those two things best, the question boils down to, which cookie should I eat?
Hold the alpha cookie in my hand, since as you said earlier, its effects are stopped by my dead skin layer.
Put the beta cookie in my pocket, since its effects will be stopped by the clothing.
Throw the neutron cookie away, since its effects are more damaging than the gamma cookie, and it can't be stopped by any of the shielding (shirt, skin) I have at my disposal.
Eat the gamma cookie, since it hurts less than the neutron cookie, and also can't be stopped by any shielding I have at my disposal.
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100%.
Now for extra credit:
What do you do with the Higgs-Boson cookie?
The only knock I've heard about the iRad is that it sucks down your iPhone battery faster than a dress hits the floor on Prom night.
Some operator training and proficiency is needed to understand that normal background radiation levels can vary daily and therefore need to be measured daily.
How long to develop a Liquid Fueled Thorium Reactor depends enormously on how much money, effort willing to be put in (24-7 cuts it back a lot) , seed nuclear materials and other materials available and regulations. Most of the plant is a chemical plant- most of it would be standard chemical components but the production is standardisable and easy to ramp up (unlike the standard uranium reactors which need to produced by one specialist producer in Japan and most of the rest is a special site specific project) . The US in the last year of the second world war was producing 1 aircraft carrier a week. Even the reactor while a specialised design and materials would be nowhere near hard as the current reactors.