Iran?
Is it possible it could be Iranian?
Mystery radioisotopes in Czech air are not from Fukushima
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that traces of radioactive isotopes have been detected in the atmosphere over the Czech Republic. The State Office for Nuclear Safety in the country reported to the UN watchdog that very low levels of iodine-131 had been measured in the last few days. "It was detected by our …
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Monday 14th November 2011 12:51 GMT David Pollard
Brainwashing to attack Iran?
It might equally well be part of a campaign to warn of the dangers of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, as recently suggested (again) by US/Israeli hawks in electioneering rallies,
The fallout from demolition using the bunker-busters that the US supplied to Israel could be considerable and would not be confined to Iran.
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Monday 14th November 2011 13:44 GMT Ralph B
A Message to the Friends of Sellafield
While you're downvoting me here, maybe you should also making some "corrections" here:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Radiological_releases
It currently reads: "Between 1950 and 2000 there have been 21 serious incidents or accidents involving some off-site radiological releases that merited a rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, one at level 5, five at level 4 and fifteen at level 3. Additionally during the 1950s and 1960s there were protracted periods of known, deliberate, discharges to the atmosphere of plutonium and irradiated uranium oxide particulates.[42] These frequent incidents, together with the large 2005 Thorp plant leak which was not detected for nine months, have led some to doubt the effectiveness of the managerial processes and safety culture on the site over the years."
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Monday 14th November 2011 11:11 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Must have been Iran. Attack NAOW!
Hillary Clinton is already on the horn demanding the Mullahs explain the unexplained iodine found over Europe. "All options are on the table" if explanations are not forthcoming immediately, she said. Prime Minister Bibi was quoted as saying that "this was yet another uncontrovertible proof that Iran is dangerously close to having nuclear capability, in weeks, if not days. They even target Europe directly - clearly an existential threat!" Statements from the IAEA could not be obtained as M. Amano was currently undergoing "further training" at a secure facility in Virginia.
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Monday 14th November 2011 18:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Yes, G Murphy, it is a coincidence.
That was a blast in an arms dump. The Mullahs may be mad, but they aren't stupid; why on earth, when they have a bunch of top-security nuclear sites specially equipped with all the processing facilities they need, would they carefully pack up the waste from one of them and move it into a conventional military base next to an arms dump?
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Monday 14th November 2011 18:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Yes, TooMuchCoffee, it was a coincidence.
Since the fire in the Swedish nuclear plant happened back in May and it has been out of commission ever since, if you bother actually reading the article to which you refer.
You were perhaps assuming that, because you read about something recently, the events it described must have happened equally recently? That's not good thinking skills there.
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Monday 14th November 2011 13:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Origin
If they dont know where it came from, how can they be so sure it wasnt from Fukushima?
All they need to do to work out where it came from is cross off all they places they are sure it wasnt from. Or is Fukushima the only place they know it wasnt from - which seems odd.
Why dont they just come out and blame the Swedes?
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Tuesday 15th November 2011 19:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
>"It was an example, nothing more, nothing less."
But it was a speciously misleading example with no relevance to the discussion; it was suggesting that there was some trivial process of elimination that could apply, when in fact the known facts aren't sufficient to eliminate the vast majority of possible sources.
As for the rest of the post, I didn't have anything to say about it, since it just seemed like minor pedantry. I can't see anything wrong with saying "we have no idea where it came from, but it didnt come from X"; there's no contradiction between "not knowing where something did come from" and "knowing somewhere that it didn't come from". They're both equivalent ways of stating that you've eliminated just one possibility from a large set of possibilities.
They know it's not Fukushima because it has a half-life of only 8 days and the reactor there hasn't been in operation (nor even undergoing spontaneous fusion in the melted core) for long enough now that there can't be any traces coming from there. That, plus the fact that the whole area around Fukushima is covered in detectors since the accident, so how could all this stuff manage to dodge past them without being noticed yet still be strong enough to be detected thousands of miles away? Yet none of that knowledge gives them any clues as to where it did come from. And that's why they can say that they a) don't know where it is from, and b) do know that it is not from Fukushima, and have both of those statements be true at the same time.
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Tuesday 15th November 2011 12:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Must agree with those that say it is probably a Soviet source.
After the fall of the USSR, a pretty large number of Very Bad Things went missing, including RTGs that were powering a large number of isolated installations, and reasonably large samples of various isotopes (among other things, I don't doubt. Rumours of missing warheads from sunken subs abound, which leads nicely on to my next point). The submarine fleet remnants from those days are also not exactly in top-notch condition right now.
Additionally, the Soviet military had a lot of secret projects going on. Coincidentally, all records are either "deleted, omitted, or missing" to quote from a film/comic that rightly decided nukes would probably kill us all.
Of course, it could be Iran making The Bomb, because they are so stupid and insane they don't believe that Israel or the US will glass them immediately if they get a hint of it.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
