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Detection of radioactive iodine at trace levels in Europe in January 2017
- jshmrsn 10y agoCan someone describe the significance/insignificance/context of this?
- cjensen 10y agoThe ISRN appears to be a French government agency. They are claiming to have detected non-natural levels of radioactive iodine across Europe. The implication is that someone, somewhere had a nuclear accident and did not report it.
- raverbashing 10y agoYes, it stands for "institute for radioprotection and nuclear safety"
- frik 10y agoThere was a recent incident in late Jan - explosion at nuclear power plant Flamanville in France: https://www.wsj.com/articles/explosion-at-edf-nuclear-power-plant-in-flamanville-1486644471 https://www.wsj.com/articles/explosion-at-edf-nuclear-power-...
- stymaar 10y agoThis incident was not located in a nuclear area and it hasn't been classified as a nuclear incident. Can't be responsible for iodine emission in the atmosphere.
- VLM 10y agoThat plant is a PWR, the water/steam in the turbine loop never contacts the fun stuff in the reactor core, there's a heat exchanger in between. Hydrogen cooled turbogenerators are a thing, although I don't know if this plant used them, probably did. Nice and cool, high efficiency. The press release claims an alternator cooling fan overheated or whatever and that caused symptoms that sound like a hydrogen cooled turbogenerator having a nice leak and subsequent fire. Doesn't mention a steam leak. So that's like one more heat exchanger away from the fun stuff. Explosions and fires and fire fighting can cause disruption and raise dust in theory, but the isotope detected has a very short half life so this wasn't a leak from a decade ago getting washed into the environment by a fire hose. Its not seeming very likely.
- aeleos 10y agoIodine has a short half-life (8 days) which is the time for half of the material to decay. This means that somewhere in europe, recently, someone is creating / releasing radioactive iodine. However, the levels are extremely low, so it isn't dangerous.
- bitL 10y agoI guess something happened in the eastern part of Europe, possibly Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Poland etc. The event was small, yet it was certainly nuclear due to a sudden increase of iodine, even if within range considered still healthy. Obviously nobody reported anything before it was picked up by detectors.
- nazgob 10y agoPoland does not have any significant nuclear industry, only single small research reactor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_reactor).
- bootload 10y ago"Iodine-131 is a radionuclide with a short half-life (T1/2 = 8.04 day)." Short half life, a nuclear event of some sort happened recently and nothing has been reported. I-131 is an isotope of Iodine and the source could be natural gas related, medical diagnostic OR a product of uranium and plutonium used in nuclear fission. [0] Which countries have access to plutonium? "only particulate iodine was reported." What is the source of the particles? "first found during week 2 of January 2017 in northern Norway." What countries have access to plutonium that are active near Norway? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131
- JoBrad 10y agoHere's a map of countries known to have or are pursuing nuclear weapons, from January 2015. http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/03/world/nuclear-weapon-states/ http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/03/world/nuclear-weapon-...
- jawbone3 10y agoDoesn't list sweden, so the map is not interested in completeness.
- bootload 10y agolooks like the US "WC-135 Constant Phoenix" atmospheric testing aircraft is being deployed. ~ http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/7758/has-there-been-a-nuclear-incident-in-the-arctic http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/7758/has-there-been-a-n... and https://twitter.com/CivMilAir/status/832716747035680768 https://twitter.com/CivMilAir/status/832716747035680768
- tonfa 10y agoFrench version of the news mentions that it has no health impact: http://www.irsn.fr/FR/Actualites_presse/Actualites/Pages/20170213_Detection-iode-radioactif-en-Europe-durant-le-mois-de-janvier-2017.aspx#.WKjAYSHyv0o http://www.irsn.fr/FR/Actualites_presse/Actualites/Pages/201... "Ces niveaux sont sans aucune conséquence sanitaire" I suppose the interest is in understanding the source of it.
- Keyframe 10y agoCan this be related to explosion in French nuclear power plant a week or so ago?
- bitL 10y ago2nd week of January, so unlikely.
- Mithaldu 10y agoThat explosion was in a non-nuclear part of the facility, so even if the timing would match, it couldn't be that.
- fnj 10y agoOf more significance, it occurred in an unfinished reactor; one which had no nuclear materials in it, and is not due to be started until 2018.
- dragonwriter 10y agoSince this was measured in early January, it certainly can't be caused by an event more recent than that, absent a temporal anomaly that would be a bigger deal than the nuclear event.
- headShrinker 10y ago> absent a temporal anomaly that would be a bigger deal than the nuclear event. It's good we are considering all options... :)
- bitL 10y agoPoland has the highest reading - something going awry at Chernobyl or somebody testing low yield nukes? I am also really disappointed this wasn't anywhere in the news, at least people could have taken some iodine. I understand the level is low but there is still non-zero probability of somebody going ill from it.
- ge0rg 10y agoPoland has the highest reading I wondered so as well, but the second-highest was from Spain, and I struggle to form a consistent picture from that.
- jakub_g 10y agoRegarding Chernobyl, they've just put in place a new sarcophagus in late 2016 after years of work. One would rather expect the radiation to get lower (but I am not an expert). Interesting anyway.
- iSnow 10y agoI think we can rule out low-yield nukes, those test would still create a noticeable signal. If I had to place a bet, then I'd put it on some low to medium accident at a nuclear power station in Russia that led to an emergency release of contaminated steam.
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- en 10y agoThe releases of January 2017 are 10,000 times lower than those observed (in France) following the Fukushima incident[0] CRIIRAD[1] believes that the meteorological conditions (and air pollution actually in Europe) and (legal) authorizations of iodine-131 releases by the industry are the cause of this event which could have passed unnoticed[0] It is an unimportant event. [0] http://www.criirad.org/balises/CRIIRAD_170214%20_I131_Europe_Radioactivite.pdf http://www.criirad.org/balises/CRIIRAD_170214%20_I131_Europe... [1] http://www.criirad.org/english/presentation.html http://www.criirad.org/english/presentation.html
- Haldir 10y agoAre you certain you have your scaling factor correct? Your Link and also https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/luft-boden/spurenmessungen/spurenmessungen.html https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/luft-boden/spurenmes... report ~50micro Becquerel/m3. Not sure how you calculated 10000 as the scaling factor.
- en 10y ago9 mBq/m3 mesured for Fukushima (France, Valence). IRSN reports 1.5 µBq/m3 (gaseous + particulate fractions) or 0.31 µBq/m3 (particulate) for this event.
- Haldir 10y agoAh ok, Thanks for the clarification
- manarth 10y agoThe '10,000 times' is a quote from the CRIIRAD PDF: "It detected the fallout from Fukushima which was about 10,000 times higher than those measured in January 2017 on France." Il a permis de détecter les retombées de Fukushima qui étaient environ 10000 fois supérieures à celles mesurées en janvier 2017 sur la France.
- rodionos 10y ago> Die Grafik wird wöchentlich aktualisiert. Unfortunately, the BfS charts are updated weekly... Do they publish latest readings in raw format somewhere? I couldn't find anything other than the delayed raster chart.
- mmrezaie 10y agoDoes anyone know why there is no data for some countries like Sweden?
- chinathrow 10y agoI think the readings originate from non-gov detection sources so that might be the cause that simply no one picked it up there.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sneak 10y agoIt is amazing to me how effective the Earth is becoming at relaying globally-affecting information to (for lack of a better term) stakeholders. Why the month delay?
- 21 10y agoFrom what I read in the comments this is a non-threatening event, so there's no uregency and no need to panic the population.
- pharrington 10y agoCould this possibly be the result of damage to a Ukrainian nuclear power plant during Russian's recent incursions?
- olex 10y agoThere are no nuclear power plants in areas of Ukraine that are affected by the conflict. The closest one is the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, but it's located in a stable area with no current military activity. Other three are further to the west and equally unaffected.
- tibarun 10y agoIt could come from other nuclear power plants[0] in Ukraine, which is a country currently at war, facing shortages and corruption[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ukraine#Active_plants_with_power_generating_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ukraine#Activ... [1] http://www.neimagazine.com/news/newscontinued-ukraine-russia-tensions-over-fuel-4915829 http://www.neimagazine.com/news/newscontinued-ukraine-russia...
- mschoebel 10y agoI'm in Germany and I have a Geiger counter running 24/7. I just looked at the data for January and February and the only thing that I notice is a VERY slightly higher reading on February 4th with 0.1727 microSievert/hour. Average for January was 0.1674, lowest was 0.1631, highest was 0.1703. So February 4th was less than 6% higher than the lowest value from January. The difference was so small that I had just attributed it to normal fluctuations when I first saw it. Whatever caused this, so far it looks like it was a very small event. I could probably provide a CSV-file with the raw data if anyone is interested. My Geiger counter stores a value every 5 minutes.
- WestCoastJustin 10y agoOut of total curiosity what does your setup look like? Do you have a mode # of what you use? Never read anything about this before. Thanks.
- simcop2387 10y agoNot sure about Op's setup, but an easy one to get into is uRad[1]. Along with logging it'll share it around the globe for finding any kind of event like this. Though I'm not sure that they've got any kind of statistical analysis going on. http://www.uradmonitor.com/ http://www.uradmonitor.com/
- cosmolev 10y agoHow expensive are those sensors?
- simcop2387 10y agoTheir indiegogo put it at $90 for a kit to solder, and $120 assembled. No idea what the cost is now since you've got to email them on their website to get one it appears https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/uradmonitor-environment-health#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/uradmonitor-environment-h...
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- KVFinn 10y agoIf someone had secretly tested a nuclear weapon in Asia or Russia, is this the sort of evidence we might expect to see?
- rospaya 10y agoSatellite imagery and seismographs would be more useful.
- pyratica 10y agoSimilar incident was reported last October. News in Finland's national broadcasting: http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/radiation_safety_watchdog_hunts_source_of_radioactive_iodine_tagged_in_air_samples/9261478 http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/radiation_safety_watchdog_...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- aburan28 10y agoProbably related to this recent incident http://nypost.com/2017/02/09/explosion-rocks-nuclear-power-plant-in-france/ http://nypost.com/2017/02/09/explosion-rocks-nuclear-power-p...
- en 10y agoAs someone said below, this incident took place 2 weeks ago in a non-nuclear part. And half-life of iodine-131 is 8 days.
- pvaldes 10y agoWhat happens with the other half?
- exabrial 10y ago::the noise one's head makes when hitting the desk::
- throwanem 10y agoIt continues to decay; the active fraction is the reciprocal of 2^n in the number of elapsed half-lives.
- pvaldes 10y agoThus, then you could be seen the remain survivor Iodine released from an earlier episode, that for some reason went unnoticed (or undisclosed) before. You could expect to have 25% still at 16 days (I said expect because this is a game of probabilities still).
- throwanem 10y agoTrue, but if it's been detected at this level of activity, why wouldn't it have been detected before now at a higher level of activity than this? There are privately operated and often networked sensors all over Europe.
- nkjoep 10y agoThis article talks about France, but highlights also Sardinia which is part of Italy.
- pvaldes 10y ago> The detection of this radionuclide is proof of a rather recent release. Three questions After rain? Could be Iodine being generated directly in place from other compounds or being seeded by suspended dust in clouds? Could be this "Ukranian war" related? 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9644685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9644685
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]