Air Force monitoring increased Iodine-131 in Europe

originally posted by: Kukri
a reply to: Lagomorphe

Thanks Lag I'm heading out for the day but will give the links a read when I get back.

You are welcome Kukri

Warmest

Lags

Ps. Not an Ex Gurkha by any chance are you?

a reply to: Zaphod58

Well , it was nice knowing you guys. Probably there's a new scenario set in motion to set off some dirty bomb or whatever nuclear devices they're going to use to justify another war here in Europe.

Can someone figure out if there are secret codes hidden in our curency . Maybe we'll idolize those before something goes off.

Now I'm going to ask a serious question besides the BS I just wrote.

How do they track it down and what could it be?

originally posted by: nelloh62
a reply to: Bedlam

Do nuclear power plants have sensors to detect this stuff if leaked ? And if so, are those alarms going off around Europe if the contamination is high enough ?

To your first question, yes. Absolutely. If the leak is in the plant, the concentration will be high enough that the plant monitoring sensors either inside or outside will be going off like mad, because if you're leaking I-131, you have a reactor vessel breach or a primary side leak. It's not going to be subtle.

As to the other, there are a lot of people doing monitoring all the time, and that's how this one was caught.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Does anyone know if I-129 has also been detected along with I-131 ?

a reply to: Bedlam

I may have got this all wrong, but.......
Isnt U-235 used for fuel for nuclear power plants and reactors for Naval ships and Submarines.
Now if one of the reactors is leaking, doesnt it give off I-131 and I-129.

emergency.cdc.gov...

healfukushima.org...

This is pure guess work on my part as I know nothing about reactors on Naval ships.

originally posted by: nelloh62
I may have got this all wrong, but.......
Isnt U-235 used for fuel for nuclear power plants and reactors for Naval ships and Submarines.
Now if one of the reactors is leaking, doesnt it give off I-131 and I-129.

Pretty sure I answered this in the post you're replying to. But yes, yes it does. However, if the reactor isn't screwed up in some way, you don't leak any.

So, like I said, if you are emitting iodine, tritium, xenon or whatnot, you have a primary side leak or a reactor vessel breach. It would be unmistakable. It's not a subtle thing. There's no commercial or military reactor that doesn't have leak detectors for this sort of thing. These are not the sorts of things that go up the big chimney looking thing as part of your normal operations, or out the tailpipe.

Open free-air emissions of any of these things is prima facie evidence of a major whoopsie.

For instance, back when the world was new, at a time that could be in the mid 70s to early 80s, a certain country who will remain nameless had themselves a brand new nuclear weapon design. They decided it would be a great freaking idea to put said weapon in an aircraft and fly that sucker around to measure any issues with their shiny new electronics and any reactivity problems with their new non-standard topology, and later planned to do a post-flight analysis of the driver charges and mike out all the mechanical bits again, to see how their new toy liked takeoffs and landings.

We do the same sorts of things, but generally with inert cores. They, however, decided it would be a good idea to test the full-up weapon.

During the test sequence, they climbed to a great altitude. At that altitude, they fully armed the weapon to carry out said testing of said electronics. Once they finished, they disarmed the weapon and decided to do some in-flight maneuvers to bump the weapon around, pull both high and low g forces and the things you'd normally see if you were flying about near weather or were doing the sorts of evasive maneuvers a loaded bomber might make.

However, as the poet said, the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley, and this test showed clearly why you don't test your new weapon for systems integration failures in its full-up configuration, no matter how attractive that might seem.

in this case, the barometric trigger option of the weapon decided to remain active whilst lying about its state. And the poor poor bairns onboard the aircraft didn't have time to teach the thing phenomenology, and as they made their leisurely descent into their home base for congratulations and the local equivalent of Miller Time, they crossed the pre-set trigger altitude and it went boom in a loud grotesque military fashion.

We found out about this by a nice fat spike in I-131, and (*ahem*) other methods which I won't state, then sent the then current air sampling planes to try to figure out where this might have happened. Eventually, a pretty good idea was formed after some satellite observations of the possible sources, and some espionage occurred, and we eventually got the whole story, and there was much rejoicing (yayy!) at the plight of said country which should not have been jacking about with the technology to start with.

These days we have nuclear detonation sensors with way better resolution and coverage, and we call them "GPS satellites".

Zaphod, no comment. I suspect you'll instantly know what I'm talking about. It's still Not Spoken Of.



Metaphorically, why you don't test weapons that aren't wrung out. This. Could. Happen. To. You.

And if you count up all the "above ground" tests that featured an accidental detonation, I know of two. We very nearly had a couple ourselves. But at least two times, something went boom when they weren't actually planning for it. And in both cases, it got the 3-S treatment, even though in one case it wasn't our buddy and in the other it sort of was. I'm not sure of the politics with that.

m.washingtontimes.com...

Happened a year ago but, related ....unrelated ...who knows

a reply to: Bedlam

Never heard of that tale, and probably never will.
But damn, that's a definite WTF moment. Boys and their toys eh.

originally posted by: nelloh62
a reply to: Bedlam

Never heard of that tale, and probably never will.
But damn, that's a definite WTF moment. Boys and their toys eh.

It's one of those things that's always put down on paper or the net as an "unsolved mystery", which it definitely ain't.

a reply to: Bedlam

Thats why i dont understand why that double flash was never explained in a satisfactory way

There are so many sensors out there, its no mystery to NEST teams...just the rest of us

a reply to: Bedlam

Looked up accidental detonation , while not finding the one you referred to all i can say is . How the hell did the Russians get anyone to go into one of their subs . And the Americans were not much better with their planes . No actual detonations but still not good .

originally posted by: penroc3
a reply to: Bedlam

Thats why i dont understand why that double flash was never explained in a satisfactory way

There are so many sensors out there, its no mystery to NEST teams...just the rest of us

Or ESA-WER alumni. Don't mention the V word, this thread is indexed. No point helping the little scanners.

I definitely don't understand not mentioning the first one. The second one, well, there was a political ally of ours mixed up in it that never wants to admit to its capabilities. And the other one got a lot of diplomatic pressure afterwards until they decided appropriately.

originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: Bedlam

Looked up accidental detonation...

It was made that it didn't happen, either time.

Why on the first one, I'm not sure.

a reply to: Bedlam

I read a report that at the time, they struggled to detect the fallout. How true that is, I have no idea.

a reply to: Bedlam

looked it up as i said , the 1950s were accidents waiting to happen .

originally posted by: nelloh62
a reply to: Bedlam

I read a report that at the time, they struggled to detect the fallout. How true that is, I have no idea.

It's in a place we don't/didn't have a lot of detectors/ships/subs and with a strong wind that disperses things into the ocean pretty quickly. That's why It's A Mystery.

eta: it's also why they picked that area to test, IMHO

Experts saying pharmaceutical factory leak is most likely - I131 is used in several cancer treatments. If it was reactors or weapons, other trace chemicals would have been detected.

Aargh, link would be helpful!

Science alert

a reply to: Bedlam

I wondered what actually happened. I never did hear anything that actually made sense about that.

originally posted by: Flavian
Except any reactor facility set up to bombard tellurium or any purification facility would be more than able to detect such a leak, and immediately deal with it. And they're also all set up to PREVENT discharge of I-131 with filters on all the vents.

Stories that say it's a pharma leak are going to have to explain that one away. Not to mention, I-131 is a solid at room temp. It's marginally possible to lose I-131 from a purification facility if you:

1) don't have filters
2) somehow lose containment on more than one batch and vent it out the chimney whilst heating the crystals into a gas
3) don't detect that you just lost more than one batch or
4) don't care

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Bedlam

I wondered what actually happened. I never did hear anything that actually made sense about that.

Um, our 'buddy' was involved under the table on that one, and we don't mention the drunk uncle.

eta: also, damn, it's going to be savage if they read this move it to RATS lol