Huge Beta Spikes in the Midwest

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-08-23 08:15

California and the west coast get a lot of attention. The University of Washingtons assessment was that the Midwest would be heavily hit by radiation in their reported linked o this site. Anyone care to comment on these spikes in Des Moines and Louisville. Based upon plate techtonics, it is my understanding the Midwest will be a dumping ground after materials make it over the mountains.
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/04/12/realtime-epa-radnet-japan-nu...

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UW paper

Submitted by bandstra on Tue, 2011-08-23 10:41.

When you say "The University of Washingtons assessment was that the Midwest would be heavily hit by radiation in their reported linked o this site," are you referring to this paper by Diaz Leon et al.? I do not see anything in that paper where they say that the Midwest would be "heavily hit" by radiation.

Mark [BRAWM Team Member]

Mark- Question from the kid

Submitted by BC (not verified) on Wed, 2011-08-24 14:40.

Mark-

Question from the kid way in the back of the class...

Last paragraph page five/first sentence page 6 - "It is striking that we see only three of the many possible fission product elements. This points to a specific process of release into the atmosphere. The exact process and why it would be selective requires further investigation, but we can speculate that the release of fission products to the atmosphere is the result of evaporation of contaminated steam, in which eg CsI is very solouble. Chernobyl debris, conversely, showed a much broader spectrum of elements, reflecting the direct dispersal of active fuel elements"

The last part got me to thinking about the "hot particles" thing yet again. Chernobyl definitely failed in a more violent manner, right? And with no containment at all. As stated in the paper, there was "direct dispersal of active fuel elements (ie, fuel fleas, hot particles, etc). But that is not the case here it seems, as neither BRAWM nor the University of WA has picked up on anything but the cesium and iodine isotopes.

What do you make of this? Does this put the hot particles issue to bed?

Volatiles from Fukushima

Submitted by bandstra on Thu, 2011-08-25 10:11.
Actually that's a great question, BC, and it gets right to the really important points about what actually happened at Fukushima. The statement "the release of fission products to the atmosphere is the result of evaporation of contaminated steam" is the standard thought right now about how the Fukushima releases occurred, given the tremendous amount of information from many measurements. The only fission products that have been seen in appreciable quantities are the Iodine, Cesium, and Tellurium isotopes, with Iodine being most abundant and Tellurium the least. If you look at their chemical properties, this is exactly the ordering of these elements from highest to lowest in vapor pressure, which is a measure of the "volatility" or the ability to jump from solid into gaseous form. So the scenario goes something like this: high core temperatures were reached due to decay heat and loss of cooling. These high temperatures allowed the most volatile fission products to diffuse out of the fuel rods into the water and steam inside the pressure vessel. The high temperatures also created H2 gas, which leaked out and caused the hydrogen explosions. These explosions, along with controlled venting, released the steam into the atmosphere. This steam carried the fission products is gaseous and aerosolized forms. In the case of Chernobyl, the contents of the core were released directly into the atmosphere through a giant explosion that blasted the top of the pressure vessel off. This dispersed not only the very volatile Iodine, Cesium, and Tellurium isotopes, but also many low-volatility or non-volatile elements such as Strontium, Zirconium, Ruthenium, Cerium, Barium, Lanthanum, Niobium, Plutonium, and Americium, among others (e.g., this article or this article). As far as I know, there have either been no measurements of these radioisotopes from Fukushima, or only trace measurements. From my reading of the literature and understanding of the release mechanisms, Chernobyl would have released a much greater quantity of hot particles than Fukushima (e.g., just do a Google Scholar search for chernobyl hot particles). I am still interested in what those folks have found from Fukushima, but I think because the release mechanism was so different that it cannot be anything near as much as Chernobyl. Mark [BRAWM Team Member]

Mark- Thanks for your

Submitted by BC (not verified) on Thu, 2011-08-25 11:36.

Mark-

Thanks for your thoughts and the links. I am also currently of the mind that there was likely far less fuel ejected from Fukushima than Chernobyl. However, it does seem that at least some fuel has been either blown out of the reactors (as NRC has stated, yikes) or maybe from destroyed rods in the SFP. This appears to be fairly localized.

The Fairewinds site recently had a post about a 1 cm piece of fuel found over a mile from the reactor...check out the NRC response...(via Fairewinds, oddly Google could not retrieve the trasncript from the NRC meeting)-

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's response was troubling, to say the least. They said, Mr. Grove, again, on p. 61 of the transcript says, “Most of the deposition that has reported to date, appears to have come from inside the reactors.” And then two pages later on p. 63, a Mr. Hallahan says, “ascribing these dispersed radioactive materials in various forms on site, you know, it is most likely they were from the reactor cores rather from the spent fuel pool.” To my mind, that is more troubling than the hypothesis that the nuclear fuel pools released as plutonium."

Full Fairewinds transcript here - http://www.fairewinds.com/content/new-data-supports-previous-fairewinds-...

Also, a Safecast sampling crew fairly close to the site evidently ran into what looks to be some fuel.

http://blog.safecast.org/2011/08/drive-report-august-7/

"It was here that we took our highest and most concerning readings of the day. The parking lot of the restaurant was active, but less than we’d just seen. But when we walked across the street – maybe 10 feet away, we measured over 20,000 CPM and 9 µSv/hr. We pulled out our SAM 940 to try and identify the isotopes and found things we weren’t expecting at all. So we grabbed some samples to send to a lab for professional analysis and got out of there quick."

NRC was discussing fission products, not pieces of fuel

Submitted by bandstra on Thu, 2011-08-25 22:22.
BC, I was interested in those quotes from the NRC, and I was able to find the link to the NRC meeting transcript: http://www.nrc.gov/japan/20110728.pdf Pages 61–63 is where those quotes are taken from. A member of the public asked a question about reports of pieces of fuel rods found near Fukushima, and therefore how the NRC can say that the spent fuel pools were undamaged. The NRC folks said that the evidence strongly suggests that the radioactive releases are from the reactor cores and not the spent fuel pools. Expanding the quote from Mr. Holahan we get:
I don't want to get too definitive on it, but, you know, ascribing these dispersed radioactive materials in various forms on the site, you know, it most likely appears they were from the reactor cores rather than spent fuel pools. I think we have to wait for a definitive answer, but things like the amount of iodine in the, you know, in the radiological material that was dispersed are generally indicative of core damage as opposed to spent fuel pool damage.
It sounds to me like Fairewinds is misinterpreting the discussion. I'm not sure how good the evidence is for centimeter-sized pieces of fuel rods being found a mile from the reactor — as far as I can tell, that claim has only come out of Fairewinds, but I could be wrong. The NRC folks clearly don't think there is any such evidence for pieces of fuel off-site, or they probably would have discussed it. Rather, they understand the question to be about how they know the radioactive material that has been dispersed is not from damaged spent fuel pools. They say that there is no evidence that the spent fuel rods contributed to the dispersed radioactive material, and their proof is that the isotope ratios indicate that the radioactive material in the area is clearly from a recently operating reactor core and not from spent fuel. Basically, the evidence for this is based on how much of the short-lived isotopes (e.g., I-131, Te-132) were observed relative to the long-lived isotopes (e.g., Cs-134, Cs-137). If there were a significant contribution from the spent fuel pools, there would be fewer short-lived isotopes relative to the long-lived ones, since much smaller amounts of the short-lived isotopes are present in the spent fuel versus the reactor cores. The statement that they are from the "reactor cores" does not mean that there were pieces of fuel ejected from containment. This just means that the fission products escaped in the steam from the reactor cores, and they are not from, e.g., steam from overheated spent fuel pools. I'm not really sure why Fairewinds is making a big deal out of this. Mark [BRAWM Team Member]

Thanks for the link Mark. I

Submitted by BC (not verified) on Fri, 2011-08-26 08:33.

Thanks for the link Mark. I will read it, even though it looks kind of high density...

Off topic, but if you haven't seen it yet, I did post a link on the "deposition in Berkeley" thread regarding a study done comparing levels of cesium deposition with incidence of cancer.

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/5449#comment-17465

UW paper

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2011-08-24 12:31.

Yes, this is the paper and it was previously available on line w/o the #31.50 purchase price. Within the paper regarding arrival times of the isotopes is a map in which amounts for various areas of the US is indicated in colors. On this map the midwest is shown to receive higher levels of iostopes.
The German monitoring system also indicates (I believe a 74 or 75 (higher than the west coast) as an actual not estimated reading, with the highest strangely enough being Florida?

Color is the temperature

Submitted by bandstra on Thu, 2011-08-25 09:36.

An earlier version of the article should still be available for free on the arxiv in PDF form.

Okay, so I think you saw Figure 5(b). That figure is a weather map used in their discussion of the prevailing weather systems over Washington and the West Coast at the time. The arrows are wind, the white lines are pressure levels, and the color is temperature. Red on that scale is about 20 Celsius. This figure is nothing more than a weather map like you'd see in a weather report.

What German monitoring system are you referring to? I am not aware of any measurements of that kind. Are you sure it's not a simulation?

Mark [BRAWM Team Member]

I noticed those, too. Huge!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2011-08-23 10:36.

I noticed those, too. Huge! And I was worrying about the new increases in Phoenix, AZ the past few days - back to April levels. Is this being caused by Japan's burning of hot waste, the China Syndrome effect, a higher smokestack to blow more radioactivity westward or a combo of all?

Japan - bury the Fuku yuck in clay/boron/zeolite lined depositories. Keep the steam to yourselves as much as possible. Same with Tennessee and other nuke burning operations - do NOT burn this horrendous stuff.

And the people of the world need to start screaming. No more nuclear power. Shut all reactors down and decommission them now before it's too late. It's already past the midnight hour...