Air Force monitoring increased Iodine-131 in Europe

There is also an RC-135 out. Possibly heading for where the WC-135 is going to operate?

USAF RC-135W 62-4138 PULPY81 departed Mildenhall - Norwegian Sea & Barents Sea Mission

From MIL_Radar Twitter

MIL Radar Twitter Link

Catch the activity at following link. KC-135 tankers in support of the WC-135 and RC-135. They appear to be heading for the Barents Sea.

MIL Radar Twitter

thebarentsobserver.com...
I do wonder if further testing has been undertaken

WC-135 imaged as it headed up the east coast of the UK.

twitter.com...

twitter.com...

a reply to: tommyjo

The RC has been there since January, flying missions over several areas.

a reply to: Bedlam

Bedlam

I have a question related to this and the general monitoring of the radiation on earth. On this site, www.veteranstoday.com... There is a posting of a collection of radiation readings from around the US, I assume there is the same system in place where this Iodine issue is going on. The questions are multiple here.

In the areas where this is being monitored, do the ground devices see deviations in normal readings commiserate with some of the possible events you are speaking about? Are we seeing a spike at all the monitoring sites?

The readings in the US provided in the above link, have gone wildly through the roof over the last year according to this poster. What explains this?

Are the readings corrupt? Can solar and cosmic radiation alter the readings of the ground devices in some way? So the network of systems around the planet reflect the same strange increases?

originally posted by: crankyoldman
a reply to: Bedlam

Bedlam

I have a question related to this and the general monitoring of the radiation on earth. On this site, www.veteranstoday.com... There is a posting of a collection of radiation readings from around the US, I assume there is the same system in place where this Iodine issue is going on. The questions are multiple here.

In the areas where this is being monitored, do the ground devices see deviations in normal readings commiserate with some of the possible events you are speaking about? Are we seeing a spike at all the monitoring sites?

The readings in the US provided in the above link, have gone wildly through the roof over the last year according to this poster. What explains this?

Are the readings corrupt? Can solar and cosmic radiation alter the readings of the ground devices in some way? So the network of systems around the planet reflect the same strange increases?

The sun is not sending Iodine 131 to the earth so that question is ridiculous.

a reply to: crankyoldman

Background radiation fluctuates for a variety of reasons. It usually stays at the same general area, you aren't going to see it go from 18 to 102 suddenly without a reason, but it's never quite the same level every day.

A lot of things the person measuring does can change your readings as well. I always hated having to do the annual scan on our x-ray units. I was always afraid I'd set the meter to something other than the required unit of measure and screw up the readings.

originally posted by: TinfoilTP

originally posted by: crankyoldman
a reply to: Bedlam

Bedlam

I have a question related to this and the general monitoring of the radiation on earth. On this site, www.veteranstoday.com... There is a posting of a collection of radiation readings from around the US, I assume there is the same system in place where this Iodine issue is going on. The questions are multiple here.

In the areas where this is being monitored, do the ground devices see deviations in normal readings commiserate with some of the possible events you are speaking about? Are we seeing a spike at all the monitoring sites?

The readings in the US provided in the above link, have gone wildly through the roof over the last year according to this poster. What explains this?

Are the readings corrupt? Can solar and cosmic radiation alter the readings of the ground devices in some way? So the network of systems around the planet reflect the same strange increases?

The sun is not sending Iodine 131 to the earth so that question is ridiculous.

Thank you for the condescension. Your reply is not only helpful to the question, but serves to reinforce my belief about the human race and their ability to avoid engaging in coherent discourse, and how unable they are at reading comprehension. I NEVER SAID the sun put out Iodine.

So far the WC-135 hasn't returned to RAF Mildenhall.

a reply to: tommyjo

A 12-15 hour mission is possible, if they have a crew waiver and tanker support. They won't carry an augmented crew, due to the mission, but i don't see any reason they couldn't get a waiver that would give up to 20 hours of duty day.

originally posted by: crankyoldman

originally posted by: TinfoilTP

originally posted by: crankyoldman
a reply to: Bedlam

Bedlam

I have a question related to this and the general monitoring of the radiation on earth. On this site, www.veteranstoday.com... There is a posting of a collection of radiation readings from around the US, I assume there is the same system in place where this Iodine issue is going on. The questions are multiple here.

In the areas where this is being monitored, do the ground devices see deviations in normal readings commiserate with some of the possible events you are speaking about? Are we seeing a spike at all the monitoring sites?

The readings in the US provided in the above link, have gone wildly through the roof over the last year according to this poster. What explains this?

Are the readings corrupt? Can solar and cosmic radiation alter the readings of the ground devices in some way? So the network of systems around the planet reflect the same strange increases?

The sun is not sending Iodine 131 to the earth so that question is ridiculous.

Thank you for the condescension. Your reply is not only helpful to the question, but serves to reinforce my belief about the human race and their ability to avoid engaging in coherent discourse, and how unable they are at reading comprehension. I NEVER SAID the sun put out Iodine.

The thread is about I131 detected. You want to talk about sunshine. Who's offtopic?

a reply to: crankyoldman

Well, I'd say this.

One, if I'm faced with what I'm told is an insanely off-average value from an instrument, I generally try to verify it by looking at other measurements that are, if possible, not in the same 'chain', that is, there's no connection between one and the other. So, if someone told me that gamma counters were reading 10,000 counts per minute all across the country, I'd first try to find WHICH counter said that, then go find one or more in the same area(s) that's not connected in any way, to verify.

The other thing to ask is, is this actually baseline for this location, in other words, is this an unusual thing, or business as usual?

So, is it the instrument, or is this actually off baseline, two first questions.

As far as 'what external influence can change this', generally you can get a bump if there is a cosmic ray burst - the little dears can create ground level gamma emissions, but generally you'll see this worse in high altitude locations. The atmosphere is fairly opaque to gammas, but still, you're talking gammas, so if you have an external gamma source you will see a bump in ground level count that again will be worse at higher altitudes. A few years back we got hit with a really enthusiastic GRB that spiked counters all over, and really inflated the ionosphere, made the magnetosphere rock as well, as well as causing some nice aurora activity.

As to the exact link, I hate to say it, but "Veterans Today" is a big stinky pile of horsecrap. I have never seen anything from there that wasn't questionable at best, or laughable at worst. It's Sorcha Faal level fail.

So, he's presenting you these gross gamma counts from a real source. The EPA rad-net is where he got the numbers. So, I suspect he intends you to look at that, maybe even look up the data yourself and say "wow, this must be real, look, the graphs match what's on the EPA site". But maybe what he DOESN'T expect you to do is verify his number for "normal". What is he calling "normal"? He's got an entire column of 'data' 2509 x normal etc. The issue is, every place has a different normal. "Normal" for background count is related to, primarily, altitude. But it's also got 'what's in the dirt around here', 'what's upwind of here' and the like included in that. So, you can't take some blanket number and call it normal. Worse, EPA bins out a lot of different data - they collect data by types and energy levels, although it's sort of granular.

So not only is every location different in terms of 'normal', you also have to calibrate whatever you're calling 'normal' against the way this rad-net info is collected. Now, it's possible, in a sane world with an author who's doing his due diligence, that said author would download the rad-net data from the beginning of time for every city in the list of supposedly irradiated cities here, and develop a "normal" baseline figure, using the EPA data to calculate it. Since you're trying to say the EPA data is currently outlandishly high, you would do well to use the EPA data to figure out what normal is, no? But it being "Veterans Today", I would expect that the author went to Wikipedia, found a count level for something that's supposed to be an average, not knowing or caring which sort of instrument got you that count, or how that instrument reacts in terms of counts vs energy level and the like, and then compared that against the EPA data, not caring that you can't directly compare count rates between different types of detectors.

Why, you ask. Well, "counts" are not a unit. It's a crude way to get an idea what the rad levels are, at the moment. But count rate will vary somewhat from instrument to instrument of the exact same design, and will vary WILDLY between two different instruments. The only way to compare radiation levels is to have a calibration graph for that instrument, and convert each instrument's count rate to an absolute radiation level, then compare the levels. You can't compare counts directly, which is what I am betting this guy did.

If you go back in the EPA database, the count numbers shown on the chart o' doom in your article are actually a bit below what you see two or three years ago, city for city, for that detector.

Not to worry; all this petty bickering about semantics. It's no biggie, K-27 probably just had a breach in the reactor and it's a whopping 33m under the surface. It's only a super big (wanted to say "critical", but that would send another message) issue. It's only unstable, and could easily go critical, so no big deal. It's all good. It'll only wipe out fishing in the area for a couple years, and contaminate things for a few decades.

The Russians aren't testing new weapons, they're just trying to keep old highly radioactive scrap from destroying everything and anything.

They've been saying K-27 is an exponentially serious problem for only a decade, but according to everyone it won't be "catastrophic". Can anyone define "catastrophic"? ...in a non-politically correct context????

The Russians believed the world would end during the Cold War, and therefore never cared about disposing any of this stuff. It was never in their long range plan. They were just going to nuke the planet and die with everyone else. It wouldn't matter then, right?

That there are Rivet Joints and WC-135's flying around in the Barrents should tell people something, but no; it doesn't matter, nobody listens anymore. It's all about "me" and my "selfie" on Fail-Book in the moment.

Can all this gear fly the Kara Sea? Ummm, not that I'm aware of, and certainly not over Zemlya. I'm guessing this would be bad ju-ju for anyone who tries it. But again, not to worry...it's just all more "fun and games", right?

/sarcasm

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Rivet Joint is ALWAYS flying around the area. The current aircraft has been there since January, and it replaced the one that finished its deployment in December. This one will get replaced by another.

So no, the fact that it's flying around doesn't tell you anything. The fact that Constant Phoenix is there is what tells us something is going on.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Okay.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thanks, Zaphod.

The WC-135 and RC-135 had completed their mission and had returned to RAF Mildenhall during 01 GMT (23 February)

0122: FLORY58 Missed approach at Mildenhall, Going around for another attempt

0115; RC-135W 62-4138 (AE01CD) approaching Scarborough at FL270, in the descent to Mildenhall with PULPY81

Twitter Link 1

Twitter Link 2

Twitter Link 3

Question - Is it common to see RC and WC flights go out with 2-3 tanker escorts? Seems like this would make for a really long mission.

I just did some rough calculations and it looks like a run up to the Barents by Zemlya and back is about ~4,500nm, and that's just the round-trip, not including loiter time.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Yes. Just about every time they see the RC launch, there are always at least a couple tankers launching about the same time.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

You raised a good point, and Zaph beat me to the answer.
Now, isn't a WC-135, RC-135 and at least two tankers a lot of expensive equipment to send up just for a pharma leak ?

a reply to: Zaphod58

Is RIVET JOINT the one that has the massive generator onboard (or was that one of the other RC's, 'SENT' maybe)?

Anyway, that thing must be a serious fuel pig.