Rockets, nukes and explosions, oh my: so what happened near Nyonoksa, Russia?

a reply to: anzha

Nearby town was told to evacuate then told to stay.

www.washingtonpost.com... 9-a5c6-1e74f7ec4a93_story.html?noredirect=on

Norway has detected radioactive iodine.

www.reuters.com...

a reply to: anzha

npw there is this www.dailymail.co.uk...

60 doctors who treated naked medical technicians wrapped in plastic are flown to moscow for urgent tests were not informed of radiation risk ( why does it say ATS is not secure ?)

Seems there may be a cover up in play here. This from yesterday says two Russian monitoring stations went offline due to technical issues.

To requests on #IMS detection beyond #CTBT, data in, or near the path of potential plume from the explosion are being analyzed . We’re also addressing w/station operators technical problems experienced at two neighboring stations. All data are available to our Member States.

Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization


And today this..

Two more stations are now offline — and not just any two. This time it is a pair of radionuclide stations in the path of the drifting plume. I’d say we are out of coincidence territory.

ArmsControlWonk

Four Russian nuclear-monitoring stations have gone silent, official says, fueling concerns Moscow is trying to conceal data after a recent explosion

Wall Street Journal


Got a feeling we may have to wait for HBO/Sky to make a follow on from Chernobyl for any of the real story to get out. Then again, Chernobyl is in Ukraine so maybe the truth will remain secret.

a reply to: RexKramerPRT

Technical difficulties of convenience haha I doubt they want to advertise the scope of the mess. Beyond that, I doubt they want to advertise exactly what they were playing with.

a reply to: RadioRobert

I know they won't want to raise any attention to what has gone on but shutting down nuclear test ban treaty monitoring stations must surely mean there will be some consequence? Whats to stop any signatories from carrying out tests and switching off their monitoring stations citing technical issues and denial?

Classic Russia.

Authorities in Arkhangelsk region, the site of the accident, said on Friday that an unnamed doctor, one of more than 110 people it said had been tested, had been found to have a small amount of Caesium-137 in his soft tissue. Caesium-137 is a product of nuclear fission.

"However, (medical) specialists are not linking this fact with his participation in the operation to deal with the incident's consequences," authorities said.

"According to specialists from Russia's Federal Medical and Biological Agency, Caesium-137 ... can build up in fish, mushrooms, lichens or seaweed. We can say with a fair degree of probability that it got into his body via food products which he'd eaten."

taskandpurpose.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

You know what? We give those folks in the gov a lot of crap.

But even they had enough sense TO NOT build a rocket/missle of the likes the Russians fowled up.

a reply to: cenpuppie

Eh?

Moar.......

They are now admitting that strontium-91, barium-139, barium-140, and lanthanum-140 were released which is clear signs of a criticality accident.

www.thedrive.com...

Sounds like the messy aftermath of a James Bond movie after the villain's lair blows up.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
Sounds like the messy aftermath of a James Bond movie after the villain's lair blows up.

Well Putin is almost like a Bond villain

This fits in with the Soviet errrr Russian pattern of lying and obfuscating such events. Now I'm starting to wonder if that nearby village is simply being sacrificed to try to maintain the "business as usual"

a reply to: anzha

Hmm... Sounds like a Story Line for the Next MALE Bond Film . " To Our Dear Leader Putin With Love " . The Brits Nor the C.I.A. don't come Out on Top this Time I Guess...........Hmm....

www.thedrive.com...

originally posted by: anzha
www.thedrive.com...

I beat you to it above till we started talking about Bond villains. strontium-91, barium-139, barium-140, and lanthanum-140 release points to a criticality incident

a reply to: FredT

Something is still screwy. All the (listed) detected isotopes are extremely short-lived. Odds that nothing else was detected other than those? Slim-to-none. If it was a fissile pile, you'd have other byproducts. Slower decaying and longer-lived. And if it wasn't, then why are there admitted fission byproducts? I
We are never going to get this story, are we?

originally posted by: RadioRobert
a reply to: FredT

Something is still screwy. All the (listed) detected isotopes are extremely short-lived. Odds that nothing else was detected other than those? Slim-to-none. If it was a fissile pile, you'd have other byproducts. Slower decaying and longer-lived. And if it wasn't, then why are there admitted fission byproducts? I
We are never going to get this story, are we?

No we are not. Heck we are still learning stuff about Chernobyl

And this admission comes from the russians who are lying so there is no reason to expect this list is anything but Flanker-esq nonsense

Yeah I had to look up several of those. Strontium 90 is all over the Chernobyl site and has a half life of almost 30 years. Strontium 91 is less than 10 hours. It kind of speaks against the RTG as you want longer life emitters to keep generating.

a reply to: FredT

Your To Smart Fred . Be Careful .............

a reply to: FredT

But that's it-- you should have way more Strontium-90 (and several other isotopes) than Strontium -91 just by virtue of how fast it decays and turns into Yttrium-91. Either Russia is bizzaro land for observed physics, or there is way more to this story than we're getting (shocked face).


You'd actually want fairly short-half lives for an rtg-esque turbine. Not measured in hours, but short. The shorter the half-life, the faster it decays which means higher emitting levels per unit, which means you need less to get the same energy out of it. But it can't be too short or you face practical problems of storage. Also the "hotter" your isptope, the bigger health hazard posed by handling. The appeal of the hafnium idea is that it is relatively stable for a weapon system (production/storage/handling) with a half -life measured in decades, but when excited by outside gamma radiation(IGE), it (reportedly) decays much, much faster, which means you could theoretically throttle it and accelerate the decay rate. IF it worked as sometimes reported, it'd represent a much, much higher energy-density than anything other than fission.

But the listed isotopes wouldn't be practical, and hint at fission. Sort of.

a reply to: RadioRobert

Thats why I'm thinking criticality incident. They had a few during the Manhattan project and it killed Slotin and Daghlian

The plutonium core even had a nickname Demon Core