I travelled on a (non-nuclear) icebreaker out from Murmansk back in 2012. On the way out to the open ocean we passed several moored nuclear powered icebreakers and other vessels in various states of decay[0]. It was both fascinating and disturbing to see - many of these had not yet been decommissioned and it seemed to me that they were huge disasters waiting to happen.
In Murmansk itself there is a nuclear icebreaker (The Lenin) that has been decommissioned and converted into a museum where you can tour the vessel and see everything including the engine rooms and nuclear reactors. Despite it being decommissioned, I discovered some systems were clearly still functioning when I accidentally leaned on a random control panel and a bunch of lights lit up!
Photos from the trip are here[1], with the first seven photos being taken of or onboard the Lenin.
Note that one of the most powerful nuclear icebreakers in the world, The 50 Years of Victory, is available for tourists to travel to the North Pole[2]
As many have noted, these are excellent photographs. I have limited knowledge and experience with photography. Do you worry about your work being stolen and sold?
I recognize those yellow jackets! I travelled with the same company (Quark Expeditions) on an expedition to Antarctica that same year. Incredible memories :-)
I do have to complement the authors of this article. It presents the facts and leaves out political rhetoric and noise. I'm pleased with the title too; if the article were featured on a mainstream news site in the USA, it would have declared it as a definitive event and give a list of what products to buy from their advertisers.
The author, Tyler Rogoway, is a revered aviation journalist. He used to write for FoxtrotAlpha. I've followed him for a couple of years and now and he always presents a very balanced stance on issues.
I feel this vilification of the media is far overblown.
Specifically: I cannot imagine that a quality news site (say the NY Times, Atlantic, or WSJ) would not mention such uncertainty.
More easily provable: I challenge you to find a single article of about a disaster that includes unwarranted product recommendations (i. e. not "authorities are asking citizen to stock water and other necessities in preparation for the hurricane...")
I'd also like to point out that the "mainstream media" is doing an excellent job regarding these reports: not reporting on them. By now, they have certainly seen these reports. The excitement that grips HN and your comment speak to the fact that it would make for excellent clickbait. But there's nothing anywhere.
On the other end of the spectrum, there's alarmist clickbait with "nuclear incident" in quotes that make it appear as a euphemism for a meltdown (otherwise it'd just be a nuclear incident), posted in a series called "The War Zone".
Here are some other issues I find with the article. It's splitting hairs in a way, but I wish people had a bit of an appreciation for the work of professional journalists and editors:
- The article is tagged "nukes" and "atmospheric testing" when it's almost certainly not a nuclear test. Because that would be stupid. And it would have been picked up by seismographs.
- "Because of the low levels of concentration, there is no health risk to the public or the environment, at least on a wide scale." This leaves open the possibility of smaller-scale health hazards, falsely sensationalising the available data. OTOH, "Levels of concentration" is a phrase capable of inflicting some serious health effects among english language teachers.
- "The highly unique aircraft are specifically designed to respond to nuclear incidents—especially those that include the detonation of nuclear warheads." There is so much wrong with this sentence:
- There's only one WC-135, so the plural is wrong.
- Everything that's "designed to..." is "specifically designed to..."
- Which "nuclear incident that involves the detonation of nuclear warheads" is not described more succinctly as "the detonation of (a) nuclear warhead(s)"?
- The latter half of the sentence seems designed to fuel speculation
- "What are WC-135s doing up there?" There's still only one of these in existence (the plural form is used another 4 or 5 times).
- "There has been some talk about even the US restarting its nuclear testing under President Trump..." If this is speculation mixed with hyperbole, do not bring it up! Any mention, no matter how dismissive, just serves to legitimise such speculation. In this case the best argument against it isn't even mentioned: you don't set up a nuclear test in 3 weeks.
- " The Russian submarine K-27 [...] is said to be literally a ticking time bomb." If the evil media conspiracy saves me from such uses of the word "literally", I think I'm ok with their control of my thoughts.
> I do have to complement the authors of this article.
Why? for blatantly lying and misrepresenting facts such as Trump was president when these "tests" took place?
> It presents the facts and leaves out political rhetoric and noise.
It does the exact opposite: it portends to lay out facts, but instead it lies about which president under which these "tests" occurred, so everything else they state is suspect.
It's interesting the author mentioned the nuclear generators and whatnot used in lighthouses and for small portable power generation. Those use strontium-90 and other byproducts of nastier energetic fissions which if my amateur nuclear physics brain is functioning correctly don't produce iodine-131. Iodine-131 is a byproduct of uranium-235/238 decay & fission. Since practical fusion doesn't yet exist, iodine-131 can only come from more energetic reactions like U235/238 fission. It's hard to imagine Russia left fissionable uranium abandoned, even in the Arctic.
The discussion of waste and derelict reactors should probably be ignored given the earlier statement that the presence of I-131 means fission took place in the last few days.
As the article states, nuclear explosions are unlikely as we would be hearing about seismic measurements too like in the case of N. Korean detonations.
My bet is on a small accident on a nuclear vessel or another small reactor around Europe (e.g. university research reactors).
My thoughts too. And in this case, phrasing it as a question is more honest than saying "there may have been a nuclear incident in the Arctic", since the statement would still likely cause some panic.
That's because it's mostly wing. It dates from the Dash-80 era of slim, pure jets and low-bypass engines. Today's high-bypass engines are big shrouded fans with a jet engine at the center to spin them. Fuel economy is much better, but the engines look bloated.
Really shows the size and capability of U.S.A.F. when they have a plane and team they can casually deploy to what appears to be a highly specific situation. The article says the aircraft is specifically designed to use atmospheric data to determine cause and nature of nuclear incidents. Imagining the manpower and testing and everything that goes into designing and implementing a system like this, and then multiplying it by all of the other teams and special aircraft and systems at their disposal, it really is impressive. All done over a period of 70 years.
Could be a satellite reentry. It's not unprecedented.
In 1978, Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 crashed into the atmosphere and spread 50kg's of Uranium across western Canada. They only recovered 1% of the fuel. One of the pieces recovered was radioactive enough to kill a person in a few hours.
Comment made in other threads is that this particular isotope of iodine is very short-lived (8 days) and a known product of uranium and plutonium fission. So, its source is assumed to be recent fission event, or medical radiotherapy generation. Any unrecovered material from defunct satellites probably no longer undergoing active fission.
Came here just to say if you're interested in this type of material, highly recommend following Tyler Rogoway. He was the heart and soul of Foxtrot Alpha before Thiel torpedoed Gawker.
The US version of what can happen is documented in the movie Command and control. When a service engineer accidentally drops a wrench that rips up a fuel rift in a missile.
http://www.commandandcontrolfilm.com/
We should cooperate in trade and peace as that is a better strategy for all according to game theory.
Many European countries share radiological monitoring data with each other, and this is made available to the public through the Joint Research Council: https://remon.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
I'm not sure if it's possible to get historical data, but if so it could be interesting to have a look at data from January.
There are also communities of hobbyists that track radioactivity with custom or home-brew stations. While less sophisticated in what they measure they can be an another point of reference. One of the oldest around is http://radioactiveathome.org/map/ another is http://www.uradmonitor.com/
I-131 can be only a consequence of recent nuclear reaction taking place. Sudden criticality and explosion of an old submaride won't produce enough of that - while will release whole lot of other isotopes, so no one would mention iodine. It can be little but a reactor meltdown or a nuclear explosion (while that must have seismic signature hard to not mention)
The quoted levels are unimaginably small! Almost invisible. I wonder how they manage to detect them. Just calculated that if whole of the Earth's atmosphere was filled with I-131 with maximum reported concentration (0.5E-6bq/m3), it would be an amount of iodine that is produced with a nuclear explosion of 0.00024kt, i.e. 240kg TNT equivalent. That is so small that it hardly qualifies as a nuclear explosion - more like 'critical assembly accident'.
And YES, this could be explained by a disposed nuclear reactor of an old submarine suddenly going prompt critical and blowing up! In the split second when it explodes it could release that and even much larger amount of iodine. I just couldn't imagine that levels so low are detectable.
It could be also an explosion on non-disposed, fresh nuclear reactor. That can explain lack of other detectable isotopes. And that is an event too small to produce a detectable seismic signature.
[+] [-] chris_overseas|9 years ago|reply
In Murmansk itself there is a nuclear icebreaker (The Lenin) that has been decommissioned and converted into a museum where you can tour the vessel and see everything including the engine rooms and nuclear reactors. Despite it being decommissioned, I discovered some systems were clearly still functioning when I accidentally leaned on a random control panel and a bunch of lights lit up!
Photos from the trip are here[1], with the first seven photos being taken of or onboard the Lenin.
Note that one of the most powerful nuclear icebreakers in the world, The 50 Years of Victory, is available for tourists to travel to the North Pole[2]
[0] http://www.redyeti.net/FranzJosefLand/content/bin/images/lar...
[1] http://www.redyeti.net/FranzJosefLand/index.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Let_Pobedy
[+] [-] tlow|9 years ago|reply
I'm thinking particularly of this story: https://petapixel.com/2016/07/27/photographer-suing-getty-im...
[+] [-] axelfontaine|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pratyushag2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvdgsng|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanjeetsuhag|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt4077|9 years ago|reply
Specifically: I cannot imagine that a quality news site (say the NY Times, Atlantic, or WSJ) would not mention such uncertainty.
More easily provable: I challenge you to find a single article of about a disaster that includes unwarranted product recommendations (i. e. not "authorities are asking citizen to stock water and other necessities in preparation for the hurricane...")
I'd also like to point out that the "mainstream media" is doing an excellent job regarding these reports: not reporting on them. By now, they have certainly seen these reports. The excitement that grips HN and your comment speak to the fact that it would make for excellent clickbait. But there's nothing anywhere.
On the other end of the spectrum, there's alarmist clickbait with "nuclear incident" in quotes that make it appear as a euphemism for a meltdown (otherwise it'd just be a nuclear incident), posted in a series called "The War Zone".
Here are some other issues I find with the article. It's splitting hairs in a way, but I wish people had a bit of an appreciation for the work of professional journalists and editors:
- The article is tagged "nukes" and "atmospheric testing" when it's almost certainly not a nuclear test. Because that would be stupid. And it would have been picked up by seismographs.
- "Because of the low levels of concentration, there is no health risk to the public or the environment, at least on a wide scale." This leaves open the possibility of smaller-scale health hazards, falsely sensationalising the available data. OTOH, "Levels of concentration" is a phrase capable of inflicting some serious health effects among english language teachers.
- "The highly unique aircraft are specifically designed to respond to nuclear incidents—especially those that include the detonation of nuclear warheads." There is so much wrong with this sentence:
- "What are WC-135s doing up there?" There's still only one of these in existence (the plural form is used another 4 or 5 times).- "There has been some talk about even the US restarting its nuclear testing under President Trump..." If this is speculation mixed with hyperbole, do not bring it up! Any mention, no matter how dismissive, just serves to legitimise such speculation. In this case the best argument against it isn't even mentioned: you don't set up a nuclear test in 3 weeks.
- " The Russian submarine K-27 [...] is said to be literally a ticking time bomb." If the evil media conspiracy saves me from such uses of the word "literally", I think I'm ok with their control of my thoughts.
[+] [-] dzamo_norton|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vocatus_gate|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shermozle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hermitdev|9 years ago|reply
Why? for blatantly lying and misrepresenting facts such as Trump was president when these "tests" took place?
> It presents the facts and leaves out political rhetoric and noise.
It does the exact opposite: it portends to lay out facts, but instead it lies about which president under which these "tests" occurred, so everything else they state is suspect.
[+] [-] patcheudor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] xelxebar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] advisedwang|9 years ago|reply
As the article states, nuclear explosions are unlikely as we would be hearing about seismic measurements too like in the case of N. Korean detonations.
My bet is on a small accident on a nuclear vessel or another small reactor around Europe (e.g. university research reactors).
[+] [-] mikeash|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchowe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drharby|9 years ago|reply
I literally never open headlines with rhetorical questions because the rule of thumb for media headlines is that the answer is always 'no'
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tradersam|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stuckagain|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bootload|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jefe_|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njharman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiph|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ad-hominem|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mmaunder|9 years ago|reply
In 1978, Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 crashed into the atmosphere and spread 50kg's of Uranium across western Canada. They only recovered 1% of the fuel. One of the pieces recovered was radioactive enough to kill a person in a few hours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954
[+] [-] westbywest|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prdonahue|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acd|9 years ago|reply
The US version of what can happen is documented in the movie Command and control. When a service engineer accidentally drops a wrench that rips up a fuel rift in a missile. http://www.commandandcontrolfilm.com/
We should cooperate in trade and peace as that is a better strategy for all according to game theory.
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|9 years ago|reply
I'm betting on Russian scrap yard accident. I'm sure the CIA knows what's really up.
[+] [-] bahularora|9 years ago|reply
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-nuclea...
[+] [-] alexeckermann|9 years ago|reply
> Officials said the blast took place in the turbine hall and confirmed there was no radioactive leak.
[+] [-] jbg_|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lexsys|9 years ago|reply
The similar case was observed in 2011 when the some I-131 isotopes leaked from the laboratory in Budapest. [1]
[0]: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nobody-is-sure-wh...
[1]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
[+] [-] mmaunder|9 years ago|reply
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_European_iodine_mystery...
[+] [-] 205guy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droopybuns|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dll|9 years ago|reply
I'm not sure if it's possible to get historical data, but if so it could be interesting to have a look at data from January.
[+] [-] puzzlingcaptcha|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anovikov|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anovikov|9 years ago|reply
And YES, this could be explained by a disposed nuclear reactor of an old submarine suddenly going prompt critical and blowing up! In the split second when it explodes it could release that and even much larger amount of iodine. I just couldn't imagine that levels so low are detectable.
It could be also an explosion on non-disposed, fresh nuclear reactor. That can explain lack of other detectable isotopes. And that is an event too small to produce a detectable seismic signature.
[+] [-] Tepix|9 years ago|reply
I've considered running a simple DIY geiger counter RadMon monitoring kit (https://sites.google.com/site/diygeigercounter/gk-radmon ) however that would only give me CPM and µSv/h.
[+] [-] cocoablazing|9 years ago|reply