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Posted on 11/11/2011 7:06:45 AM PST by MindBender26
Edited on 11/11/2011 7:10:56 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
VIENNA (AP)
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Something happened at 11:11:11 11/11/11
You have a good point, but:
“much higher levels would have to existed elsewhere if it was coming all the distance/time from Japan.”
Who says that they don’t. Much has been covered up on this by governments who don’t want to panic the sheeple against nuclear power.
Seventeen workers exposed to radiation at Idaho lab
Idaho lab accident may stem from damaged container
Granted that has nothing to do with Europe, but this incident was not reported in the NRC Event Notification Reports for 2011. And I have been looking every day. Why would they not report this incident when they report drunk and stoned nuclear workers, patient radiation overdoses and stolen nuclear equipment ?
Super-Powerful X-Ray Beam Will Probe the Center of the Earth
If the source was Iran, you would think that Israel would have detected the Iodine first. Now if they were causing the problem, they might stay silent about the issue. And between Europe and Iran and between Europe and Syria there is Turkey.
Czechs say nuclear iodine not from power plant
And this report claims radioactive Iodide is not practical in a dirty bomb due to technical reasons.
This is interesting. As many in this thread argue, the source of the iodine is probably much closer to Czech than Japan.
Too short a half-life to be from Japan.
What emits I-131>
I don’t believe I-131 has too short a half life to make it to Europe. Shortly after Fukushima went boom, air monitors in the US registered I-131. After the US detected it, France reported that they were receiving it. After about a month, France said that, given the rise in I-131 over the preceding weeks, they were instituting precautions for young children and pregnant women advising them to avoid dairy for the time being. I recall a dairy in VT dumping milk that had exceeded FDA limits on I-131 but the US is not making much effort to measure anything coming from Fukushima. I don’t know if or when France lifted that advisory. True that I-131 has an 8 day half life but at the 8 day mark, half of it is still present so this could be from Fukushima.
Fukushima is producing short half lived gases like Xenon and, at times, TEPCO reports I-131. There is a debate as to how the melted molten fuel cores, which now rest somewhere in the basement of the reactors, are undergoing fission to produce these gases and other contaminants. Some people believe that one of the fuel cores (#2) reached the water table and cooled off enough to restore criticality (begin to undergo fission as if it were a functioning power plant) and some, including TEPCO, are claiming that the short half life products are being produced by spontaneous fission. Since no one wants to believe we have ‘live’ reactors ‘running’ outside their containment vessels -there is incentive to believe that it is instead ‘spontaneous fission.’ The fact that TEPCO is not currently reporting I-131 may be a feature of where and what they are choosing to measure and report. Here’s an article on the ‘criticality’ versus ‘spontaneous fission’ issue which notes that Xenon was detected in Fukushima November 2nd.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/11/tepco-to-redefine-its-idea-of.html
Nuclear fuels like Uranium-239 undergoing fission split apart and one of the products is I-131
In the comments section of the article I posted, I see someone’s theory re source of I-131 in Europe is Fukushima. Won’t have time to check out the video they post but here it is if anyone is interested:
BEGINNING OF NOV: high radiation (620 mSv/h) at reactor 3, Fukushima Daiichi
NOV 2: detection of Xenon 133,135 at reactor 2, Fukushima Daiichi
NOV 5: many minor health effects (e.g., eye itching) reported via tweets in Tokyo, wind came from the North
NOV 6: air with radioactivity is brought from the North to Tokyo
NOV 11: radioactivity in Europe
Reference: http://fukushima.over-blog.fr/article-iode-radioactif-sur-l-europe-evenement-nucleaire-en-cours-88519209.html
Simulation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08dcG-ibYrY&feature=player_embedded
Now the presence of the Xenon was blamed on Spontaneous Fission according to TEPCO. So its possible I guess that Iodine could also be produced in these various spontaneous fisson reactions, but the amount produced would be theoretically too small to measure by the time it traveled around to Europe. And if it is from Fukushima that means that the US government measured it and has kept silent about the radioactive Iodine. And we all know the US government would never hold back the truth from its citizens. Got to go. Have to put my loose tooth under my pillow for the tooth fairy.
Start Wikipedia excerpt.
Iodine-135 is a fission product of uranium with a yield of about 6% (counting also the iodine-135 produced almost immediately from decay of fission-produced tellurium-135).[3] This 135I decays with a 6.7 hour half-life to 135Xe. Thus, in an operating nuclear reactor, 135Xe is being continuously produced. 135Xe has a very large neutron absorption cross-section, so in the high neutron flux environment of a nuclear reactor core, the 135Xe soon absorbs a neutron and becomes stable 136Xe. Thus, in about 50 hours, the 135Xe concentration reaches equilibrium where its creation by 135I decay is balanced with its destruction by neutron absorption.
When reactor power is decreased or shut down by inserting neutron absorbing control rods, the reactor neutron flux is reduced and the equilibrium shifts initially towards higher 135Xe concentration. The 135Xe concentration peaks about 11.1 hours after reactor power is decreased. Since 135Xe has a 9.2 hour half-life, the 135Xe concentration gradually decays back to low levels over 72 hours.
The temporarily high level of 135Xe with its high neutron absorption cross-section makes it difficult to restart the reactor for several hours. The neutron absorbing 135Xe acts like a control rod reducing reactivity. The inability of a reactor to be started due to the effects of 135Xe is sometimes referred to as xenon precluded start-up, and the reactor is said to be "poisoned out"[4]. The period of time where the reactor is unable to override the effects of 135Xe is called the xenon dead time.
End Wikipedia excerpt.
My non-nuclear scientist wild guess on this would be that we may have small pockets of recriticality occurring and then shutting down. All throughout the melted down reactor cores where ever the heck they are scattered about.
From the link you provided:
“Because radioactive releases after the March 11 quake occurred almost immediately, the radioactive isotopes from Japan took about 10-11 days to reach Europe.”
Agreed.
But what about in between Japan and Europe? :)
Actually if you look at the static timeline, it does not line up exact. The Czech Republic has reported the measurable radioactive iodine since the end of October. That means it arrived there 11-14 days ago. Basically approximately 2 weeks. That really however does not matter due to the fact that we do not know when the high xenon levels began at Fukushima. The first daily measurement was undetectable with detection levels occurring on day two and three. There are however some complaints about TEPCO playing games with detection levels. This has been countered by TEPCO defenders claiming that the detection levels always vary based on each technique utilized to take such measurments.
That is all fine and dandy but TEPCO needs to always release the detection limits whenever they release measurements. Otherwise people might actually get an incorrect conclusion and we would never want that to happen. Right TEPCO ?
Later.
glows in the dark later--
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