Tellurium-132
Is the team finding Tellurium-132 at any level? If so is there a way to confirm that the Tellurium is coming from Fukushima? Any comments about presence of Tellurium? It seems to signal some specifics reactions, can the team explain the connection?
Te-132
Is there a team member willing to comment on the continued presence of Te132 in their findings?
Tellurium
yes, they have found some:
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/AirSamplingResults
And:
Submitted by dchivers on Thu, 2011-03-24 06:31.
We do see Te-132 and the decay daughter of I-132 along with I-131, Cs-134, and Cs-137 in trace amounts. Just because we see Te-132, does not necessarily mean a core meltdown, but it does indicate a significant release of fission products from the fuel. Te-132 has a half life of about 3 days and therefore we know this is from one of the three operating reactors that were shutdown at the earthquake as opposed to the spent fuel pools which had been shutdown for greater than 100 days. When a reactor shuts down, the production of these nuclides cease and this kind of starts a clock where after a certain amount of time, certain nuclides decay away. Te-132 is one of these and so it gives us some indication of where the release came from. No data from our measurements point to a meltdown, however, I think the accepted assumption is that all three units at Fukushima have some sort of core damage. The extent of this damage is still unknown.
The levels are now down at or below their minimum detectable amount.
the presence of tellurium-132
The presence of tellurium-132, a by-product of nuclear fission that degrades over weeks, suggests that the wind-blown radiation came from a material that had recently seen fission inside a nuclear reactor. This rules out older, spent fuel rods kept on the premises of the power plant and points to the fuel rods that were generating power until the earthquake struck.
in other words tellurium-132 can only come from a reactor core, during a fission.
Tellurium 129 Presence Is Proof Of Inadvertent Recriticality At Fukushima
For those wondering just why TEPCO and Japan in general have been in such as scramble to cover up as much of the reactor in a concrete sarcophagus, after up until now the utility had been perfectly happy to come up with one after another useless idea of delaying the inevitable moment of sarcophagation, here is Arnie Gunderson from Fairewinds and Associates explaining that now there is definitive proof, courtesy of Tellurium 129 and a order of magnitude higher concentration of Iodine 131 in Reactor 1, that the reactor is now undergoing sporadic events of recriticality: in other words, the fission reaction is recommencing on its own, and without any supervision, emitting undetectable neutron beams which are irradiating any and all personnel still on location. For the time being these recritical events are isolated, although courtesy of the whole premise behind a nuclear power plant, all it takes is for some form of critical threshold to be reached, and for a full blown self-sustaining chain reaction to result in Chernobyl part 2. If nothing else, we now know why the authorities are desperate to bury everything literally under the sand. Because at least a few thousands tons of concrete will provide a modest buffer for unprecedented amount of radiation before these hit the surrounding environment. Lastly, all those hoping that natural rod cooling is sufficient, and if the plant is left along long enough on its own, things will get better, are now proven wrong. We can only hope the outcome this time will be a tad more favorable than all the previously disastrously aborted attempts at restoring order.
It is not true that if we
It is not true that if we see Te132 that there was a re-criticality accident. From the normal operation of the reactor prior to the event, there is a normal inventory of Te132 that would take weeks to decay away. Te132 was one of the major releases along with Cs137/Cs134 and I131/I132 (the latter because it is a decay product of Te132). Observing Te132 (and I131) was an indication that the release was from recently operated (<30 days) fuel where the fission product inventories had not decayed away yet. The spent fuel storage ponds held fuel elements that were last operated at criticality >100 days prior to the event and thus one would not observe Te132 from these elements. This does not rule out releases from the spent fuel ponds, since we see Cs137, it just shows that the releases of Te132 and I131 should correlate to the operating reactors.
Cover Up?
I agree why is this issue not being discussed? Why is the US not warring people about the very high levels of these elements that are being found in the rain right now.
There are a lot of smart people out here who must realize that cows eat grass, we eat cows. More importantly our children and pregnant women drink milk.
Anyone awake?
What's up
How come no one wants to answer this?
the tellurium has to be
the tellurium has to be coming from the destroyed and leaking fukushima reactors. that is a product of nuclear fission with MOX fuels.