Air Force monitoring increased Iodine-131 in Europe

a reply to: nelloh62

The RC is flying separate missions. It routinely deploys to the Hall for several months before rotating out for another aircraft. There is currently a W and a V there, tail numbers 138 for the W and 846 for the V. The W has been there since at least December.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Not anymore. They finally upgraded to the CFM56. Rivet Joint is the SIGINT aircraft. It's not really a power hog. You're thinking of Combat Sent. That's the one that does the radar mapping for SAM radars. Cobra Ball does the optical work to monitor missile tests.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thanks Zaph, I have not been as good as Tommyjo at tracking these aircraft, so is the RC-135 and the WC-135 both going into the same area, or different directions.
Was it just a coincidence they were both going the same route, at least for a while, the other day ?

a reply to: nelloh62

The WC is going up near where the RC has been flying to take samples. The Kola Peninsula has a big Russian navy area, so the RC flies near there trying to grab any radio signals it can from the Navy.

But yeah, just an interesting coincidence.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Cheers.

Oh, by the way, has any member here heard any rumours/inside info if anything else apart from I-131 has been detected ?
Are they still getting a strong trace of I-131 ?

According to the Air Force this was a planned deployment, and has nothing to do with a nuclear test, but we knew that already. A PR firm is saying that I-131 releases are common as part of nuclear power, and it's common to see this, especially during winter. Oddly enough, though, for something that's so common, this is the first time I've ever heard of it happening.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
A PR firm is saying that I-131 releases are common as part of nuclear power, and it's common to see this, especially during winter.

On my planet, this is an emergency procedure when you have an uncontrolled hydrogen generation and your recombiners have failed. And even then, the venting system is supposed to filter out any discharge of cesium, xenon or iodine.

You CAN get a tritium discharge this way. But it's considered bad form.

eta: The NRC puts it this way...

Gas discharges other than tritium stem from:

Fission of residual uranium contained on the exterior of the fuel rods, referred to as tramp uranium.
Leaks from failed fuel rods.
Diffusion of radioactive gases through intact fuel rods.
Activation of materials in reactor cooling water.
Erosion and entrainment of activated materials from pipes, valves, and pumps in the cooling system.

You get tritium production from normal operation. If you add up all the tritium release from the reactors in the US, it's something less than 100 curies a year. The other gases added together are several orders of magnitude less. You'd get 10-100 millicuries a year from most PWRs of xenon, krypton and iodine added, and it's considered an abnormal event. And you look for it in your vent effluent.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Yeah, but if I am reading it correct, the predominant fallout from Fukishima was I-131, along with other fallout of course.
I am not suggesting a power plant has gone pop, but it's all very strange.

" Compounding this tragic loss of life, a series of equipment and structural failures at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant (FDNP) resulted in the release of many volatile radioisotopes into the atmosphere. The radioactive fallout predominantly consisted of iodine-131 (half-life 8.02 days), caesium-137 (half-life 30 years) and caesium-134 (half-life 2.06 years), but many other fission products such as 129mTe (half-life 33.6 days), 129Te (half-life 69.6 months), 136Cs (half-life 35 days), 110mAg (half-life 250 days), 96Zr (half-life 64 days), 95Nb (half-life 35 days), 140Ba (half-life 12.7 days) and 140La (half-life 1.68 days) have been detected as minor radionuclides within 300 km of FDNP [2]. 131I remains the greatest radiation health threat to the public, especially to children and adolescents, owing to its physiological uptake in the thyroid gland."

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

a reply to: Bedlam

I was given a FULL tour of a nuke plant , even the parts tourists are not allowed in.
You could not fart in that place without an alarm going off, never mind a leak of something,
So, surely somewhere in the world, someone has an alarm going off .
If it's just a low dose of I-131, just own up to it. Keeping shtum doesn't look good for them.
On a side note, I stepped off the path at said plant and set the alarm off, I nearly sh*t myself. The armed guards were non too happy either !

a reply to: Bedlam

They're really going out of their way to play this off as "nothing to see here, move along". Even if the WC was a planned deployment, there's no way you're going to convince me that the I-131 release is normal, and happens all the time.

Scientist Jayde Lovell, host of TYT network’s ScIQ and executive director of ReAgency, a PR firm that specializes in science storytelling, told the International Business Times UK, “Iodine-131 is not a mystery.

“It’s released in low levels normally as part of nuclear power and, since nuclear power is common throughout Europe, it’s not unusual to be able to detect trace amounts during certain types of weather, particularly the cold weather of a European winter,” she told the newspaper.

“I would be expecting to see a lot more and more different kinds of radiation than just Iodine-131 if it was a nuclear test,” Lovell said.

www.dodbuzz.com...-lKvjGAU.twitter

a reply to: Zaphod58

yep, I'm with you on that one.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
“It’s released in low levels normally as part of nuclear power and, since nuclear power is common throughout Europe...

Then why isn't it being seen all over Europe, and why is it leaving a trail?

Why wasn't it there every year?

Which plant released THAT MUCH I-131? And if they're releasing that much I-131, why aren't they releasing proportional amounts of xenon, krypton, cesium and tritium? You get the same basic set of effluent gases from a nuke as you do from a reactor with a bad rod and the filters and alarms out...

If it's venting iodine, it's venting all the other gases you get when you fission uranium.

eta: post copypasta'd to dodbuzz. Take that, Jayde.

Now the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization is saying that there has been no I-131 detected in the last several months. So apparently the French government just decided to issue that statement for no reason, about it being a pharmaceutical release. And all the monitors that have detected it are off.

www.popularmechanics.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

All over Europe, at the same time...

Yeah, I'll buy that. Not.

a reply to: Bedlam

In essence, there is no good reason for any release of this stuff at these levels?

I don't suppose I'm alone in smelling something rotten in Europe??

a reply to: seagull

It's pretty funny that there have been multiple press statements about something that isn't happening. And people are coming up with explanations for a non-event.

a reply to: seagull

I haven't smelled something this rotten in a long long time.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Is that a nice way from TPTB telling us all to STFU

Where i work is right on Lake Michigan if I walk out on the beach and look North I see Palisades if I look south I see Cook. If anything happens at either plant we know within minutes. I've been here 15 years and all has been quiet. Many locals monitor for stuff themselves just to get their name in the paper.

originally posted by: seagull
a reply to: Bedlam

In essence, there is no good reason for any release of this stuff at these levels?

I don't suppose I'm alone in smelling something rotten in Europe??

Not that I can think of.

The story keeps morphing. First, it's moving north to south. Then west to east. Then south to north.

It has to be pharma, because they're only getting I-131, and a fission process of any sort would release other effluent as well (which IS true, if I-131 is all you're getting...). But now ol' Jayde says it's normal for a reactor to vent I-131 at low levels, which is true, but at VERY low levels, 10 millicuries a year or so, and in addition to xenon, krypton, and cesium, which will all go through the same hole your iodine went through for a total of maybe 100-200 mC a year.

So Jayde's trying to say you should ignore the lack of other gases because nukes emit I-131. But no where NEAR the amount of tritium, and did they measure for that to see if it's in proportion? And still where are the other effluent gases?

But NOW, it didn't happen at all. And Jayde's wrong, there WAS no I-131 and everyone's lying.

This reminds me of the time that Wayne and Judy were hoaxing the alien communication, and kept coming up with contradictory patches to the story on the fly.