Posted on 03/28/2012 1:00:08 PM PDT by ransomnote
A paper by a researcher at Tokyo University about discovery of neptunium-239 and other short-lived nuclides in Iitate-mura seems to have finally been accepted and published by Environmental Pollution, a peer-reviewed scientific magazine. It was made available online on January 20, 2012, and is published in the April 2012 issue of the magazine.
It took nearly 1 year for off-line readers to know about the discovery. The researcher took the samples of soil, plants and water in early April last year.
In August last year there was an article of neptunium-239 having been discovered in Iitate-mura, 35 kilometers from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, by a researcher at Tokyo University. The article was written by a husband and wife comedian couple. (For more, see my post on August 15, 2011.) They were criticized for not revealing the source (name of this researcher) or the details. Their response was that the researcher was submitting the paper to a peer-reviewed magazine.
Well here it is, published by a peer-reviewed magazine nearly one year after the accident, and now utterly irrelevant except for some academic curiosity. The information, as it sat in limbo of peer-reviewing process, was not used to educate, warn people in Fukushima, particularly in Iitate-mura, so that they could decide what to do. If they had known their soil and vegetation were extremely contaminated with short-lived radionuclides with strong radioactivity, they might have done things differently.
I hope the researcher at least warned the villagers privately.
NOte: Neptunium is short lived and decays to form Plutonium
As long as they haven’t discovered Illudium PU-36 we should be safe. We don’t want anybody making explosive space modulators.
I guess I don't understand Japanese comedy.
:)
Well, now that you mention it, the fact that the comedian couple were quoted in relation to the research did not help the public realize the importance of the actual finding of the precursor to plutonium.
:)
Apparently the comedian couple were the only ones unafraid, professionally, to alert the public to the research which proved that neptunium was present and would decay to form plutonium. As you can imagine, the pro nuke types had a field day with these ‘spokespersons’. Unfortunately the research proving the presence of neptunium was peer reviewed and released a year later meaning the public was not warned during the time it might have wanted to know that they were exposed to high energy short lived isotopes which would decay to form plutonium.
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