Radioactive ruthenium from an undeclared major nuclear release in 2017

[noirchen]

A few years ago a professor from the Miami University in Ohio came to our institution to give a talk about her students accidentally found high levels of radiation in a valley nearby. After some investigation they tracked down the source of radiation to a factory that prepared nuclear raw materials during the cold war. Some of the radiating dusts got carried by the wind and affected a region of tens of miles down in the valley. Apparently the locals in the valley town are not informed and the cancer rate is relatively high in the town. For some reason their papers on this are rejected, and calls for a public investigation were buried. I am not sure what the situation is now, but it would not be too difficult to contact some faculties of environmental sciences in that university if anyone is interested.

[rhcom2]

I wonder if this was it, Alba Craft Laboratory, Inc. They processed radioactive uranium in Oxford, Ohio. https://magazine.miamistudent.net/alba-craft/

Sounds like it got cleaned up in the 1990s.

[Spooky23]

There are alot of anecdotal incidents like that which don't attract attention for reasons unknown or because they fall short of a standard. One I'm familiar with was a cancer cluster associated with county roads, which were tarred gravel until the late 1970s. A local factory would kindly "donate" waste oil loaded with various nasties to the county, who would tar the roads with it, there were elevated rates of lung cancers along those roads. Because the "cluster" was a strip, it didn't meet a geographic threshold.

Other common nasties include old rail depots and military depots. The stuff they used to clean locomotives was awful. I read a local article about a local military depot issue and a program called "Defense Environmental Restoration Program for Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS)". The New York/New Jersey District estimates it has $500M of cleanup to do, with an annual budget of $3-5M.

[vectorEQ]

it is really difficult to get people to 'admit' mistakes like this due to the long term human costs often involved. Even, people will do a lot to avoid any additional financial costs incurred when such an admission is made. Hence, academics and interested non-academic parties are often boycotted from releasing such information, or if not possible ,ridiculed / discredited to avoid such financial costs to the responsible parties.

it's a shame, and i'm not yelling conspiracy, but this is how business and politics works, and that's a shame / sad.

If anyone was interested to follow up and research the current status of this valley you note, most likely they would meet similar resistance to publish their findings.

[atoav]

On Hacker News there are relatively many people arguing for nuclear fission, I wonder if they ever factor in societial factors like these.

In an ideal society it still would be a challenge to deal with the unprocessable wastes of nuclear fission (some extremely poisonous and with half lifes well beyond thousand years). But we are far from ideal and the incentives to not just offload it onto future generations are simply not there.

[fred_is_fred]

[citation needed]

[ggm]

The ability to walk back up a half-life and radionucleotide chain, and also map to wind, water flows, and so triangulate to a source at a given time.. Amazing stuff.

Is it too much to hope, somebody is going to do some open declaration? In times past, people felt a compulsion to report. It feels like we have had a cultural shift, and whoever has information, feels no obligation to report.

I wonder what life closer to the facility was like when this happened? How much did they get told about their exposure?

[dvfjsdhgfv]

If they declined when they did it, why should they back down now? This would mean that not only they polluted the environment, but also are liars (and cowards). There is no way they'd admit that.

[avian]

The most interesting thing I find here is that these results seem pretty conclusive that ruthenium couldn't have come from a breach in an active reactor.

There was a submission on HN a while ago (I can't find it right now) that speculated that this release was related to Russia testing a nuclear jet-powered missile. A crash after a test flight would release radioactive materials from its reactor.

This report seems to strongly point against that theory.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

The event happened in October 2017. Putin presented a new arsenal of nuclear weapons in March 2018. Some kind of indirect relationship is not impossible.

[fdavison]

The EPA has a website that displays a network of radiation sensors in the US:

https://www.epa.gov/radnet

Hope you never need that information.

[ninjin]

In the immediate aftermath of the 2011 incident at Fukushima Daiichi, a hobbyist network formed around Tokyo monitoring radiation levels and publishing it online. While the act itself was heartwarming, I can very much attest that I never wish a situation where you occasionally refresh an online radiation heat map upon anyone.

[ganzuul]

Expected and wished for a heatmap instead of something quite so... interactive. Good resource nonetheless.

[jdlyga]

I had to track those right after Fukushima, since there were worries about a cloud headed towards the western US.

[PeterStuer]

Mankind can not handle the responsabilities that come with nuclear technologies. Aging and literally crumbeling reactors are kept running on extended permits granted by cabinets where the revolving door with the energy industry is well oiled. Fukushima thaught the cynical lesson that a nuclear operator can profit even more from the post-accident cleanup than from simply running the facility. Meanwhile the nuclear lobby thankfuly jumped onto the passing 'CO2 posterchild' train for a free greenwash. But hey, it is so more trendy, edgy and suave to be pro-nuke these days than to be a tired old hippie pointing out that nuclear is no free lunch.

[TeMPOraL]

But mankind can handle the responsibilities that come with geoengineering, such as just heating up the globe? Because that's what we've been doing for the past century.

Fukushima taught the cynical lesson that overreaction to and media-fueled mindless panic about nuclear incidents causes more damage and death than nuclear incidents themselves.

"Nuclear is no free lunch", but you get to pick what you eat for the money you have. When you compare fossil fuel burning, which involves mining and shipping stupendous quantities of fuel and releasing equally stupendous amount of CO₂ pollution (including radioisotopes!) into atmosphere, to nuclear power, which involves mining, shipping and using tiny amounts of fuel for the same energy output, and the result is a tiny amount of solid waste... well, nuclear is a no-brainer here.

[simion314]

Nuclear energy is not a free but it kills a lot less the coal, so closing nuclear plants and using coal plants like Germany did is stupid(the decision was pure political and forced by the Green party, ironic)

[amai]

It looks weird to me that apparently nothing was detected in South Germany. It looks like this data is missing in figure 4.

[pmarreck]

Why would anyone still try to hide a nuclear accident in this day and age when the fallout is traceable?