Sensors detect rise in nuclear particles on Baltic Sea | Hacker News Reader

Sensors detect rise in nuclear particles on Baltic Sea

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437 pointsBerislavLopac260 comments

Now, this is probably nothing. The sensors are doing their thing and from time to time there is a spike. On the other hand, this is how Chernobyl first was reported...

For more radiation horror pease read about the ”Goiânia accident”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident (Learned about it recently and wow. What a story.)

It's probably not a problem... probably... just a showing a small discrepancy. It's well within acceptable bounds.

Seriously, I’d be interested in some stats on how various nuclear accidents have been disclosed/reported. Feels like a good litmus test of transparency.

Set anti-mass spectrometers to 105%.

I read about that story. it's incredible. love it (in a weird way I guess, but it was so fascinating)

Wow.. Never heard of it before, thanks.

That heavily reminds me the "Roadside Picnic" (1972) novel of Strugatsky brothers (that same novel, that coined term "Stalker"). The only difference that the heroes of the novel dealt with consequences of alien civilization visit, and ”Goiânia accident” is purely our's own...

Roadside picnic didn't coin the term stalker. Stalker is a Soviet film based on the book.

Yes it did. "Stalker" is the name of their profession in the book.

The word "stalker" comes from the 1500s. Deer stalking is a profession that existed in the 1800s. Roadside Picnic came out in 1971.

Maybe you mean Roadside Picnic introduced the English word "stalker" to the Russian language? It certainly didn't coin the term (create a new word).

It coined the use of "stalker" to refer to a specific sort of post-apocalyptic profession, someone who is adept at navigating the waste left by some disaster or "forbidden" places. Dangers might be physical, radiological, or metaphysical.

In modern usage it has made its way into books and video games, and people who do tours of Chernobyl have been known to refer to themseves as such.

"Roadside Picnic" is a Russian book. The word "stalker" wasn't used in Russian language at all before it. Hence, it coined the term. The rest is demagogy.

That's not what coining a word means.

I'm not a huge film buff or anything, but I did watch Stalker. The music and cinematography was captivating in a way I rarely get in anything but video games or books. Usually movies don't capture me that way, they're far too fast, literal and descriptive. Stalker left so much to the imagination that I was constantly engaged in trying to figure out what they were thinking, where they were going, and what it was they expected to find. It gave me all the time I needed to think about it too.

If you like slow paced movies I would recommend checking out his (Tarkovsky) other works. Ingmar Bergman and Bela Tarr also come to mind. They are definitely slow and pretty far from being literal too.

It was interesting but much too slow.

I highly recommend his other movies too - I love Solaris and Andrey Rublev, but others are great too.

And I think currently in his steps is following another great Russian director, Andrey Zvyagintsev. The Return was mindblowing.

> Usually movies are too fast

Stalker consists of 143 shots in just under three hours. A blissful pace.

Not SF, but watch "Ivan's Childhood", his first film. I saw it first on New Years Eve in Scotland. Me and my then wife went round to her friends house to pick her up for the usual celebrations. While the girls were getting made-up I started watching the film on the TV - I had never heard of it or Tarkovsky before, and I have no idea why it was on at New Year. They eventually came down and said "let's go" but I refused - "catch you later" - I just had to watch the film. Somewhat later friends mum came in and said "X why aren't you out with Y and Z" - I said "I HAVE to watch this". And I did, and then I went out and got pissed. It's a great film.

You'd better read the book first before making such statements.

You've literally said a book from 1971 invented a new word. And I'm saying that the word already existed.

Roadside Picnic is the equivalent of LOTR or Neuromancer when it comes to defining a genre of pop culture.

It was published 7 years before the movie Stalker.

It is a short novel and a great read, it is also a stark contrast to Western SciFi.

Both Roadside Picnic from Russia and the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy from China have made me interested in Science Fiction from non-western cultures. There's a freshness of view that's hard to describe.

Then definitely track down Macmillan's Best of Soviet Science Fiction series:

https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Macmillan%27s+B...

and:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?1107

Think Roadside Picnic x 100, because that's the quantity of really excellent science fiction stories and ideas you can expect.

A free (but bad) translation of 'Self Discovery' by Vladimir Savchenko is available if you search. I used this, together with my own physical copy, to make a proper ebook - let me know if you want a copy; I can't locate it at this moment...

And, in my opinion, the finest science fiction short story ever written (apologies to Asimov's Nightfall and Godwin's The Cold Equations): Nine Minutes, by Genrikh Altov https://www.altshuller.ru/world/eng/science-fiction4.asp

Not sure if you consider him non-Western or not but if you haven't read him try Stanislaw Lem.

> "Roadside Picnic" (1972) novel of Strugatsky brothers

Before his death, Boris Strugatsky gave a license for writing a sequel to Finnish author Ville Vuorela. Vuorela published The Hollow Pilgrim in 2014 as ebook. Something went wrong with the deal between the small Finnish publisher and Amazon, and now the ebook is annoyingly difficult to find.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23354402-the-hollow-pilg...

The filming of Stalker[1] was itself fraught with industrial contamination — possibly with to the extent of eventually claiming Tarkovsky’s own life, by cancer.

Zona by Geoff Dyer is an excellent discourse on the work, which I heartily recommend, and where I first read about this and many other fascinating details.

[1] ...or ker-tan-kep as my own ignorant tongue insists on pronouncing it.

Or the Church Rock incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill...

Thank you for this. It's my first time learning about it. I'm almost happy it's unknown since this is such a better argument against nuclear power than 3 Mile etc. Although I suppose for it to be an effective scare tactic you'd have to ask yourself some tricky questions about how much you value indigenous lives over corporations...

Take a look at the hanford site if you want to be scared. And look at where it is, note that's the Columbia river, which rolls right through northern portland. Or if you don't care about people, it also powers most of the data centers in the northwest. And is right near where most of the hops are grown (won't someone think of the beer!).

https://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/AboutHanfordCleanup

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hanford+Site/@46.5656811,-...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Portland+International+Air...

That area also has lots of Bitcoin mining operations. All of society is at risk over here.

Definitly, the world would be much worse off without the blockchain!

Yup, I've visited the site and walked up to the reactor face! I think the thing about Church Rock that struck me was the absolute negligence demonstrated throughout. There's certainly neglect at Hanford, but to my understanding none of that is due to the design of it when it was active.

Note that Hanford Reach and the Savannah River site are some of the most ecologically successful areas in the United States, much better than National Parks and National Forests. That's because they're surrounded by razor-wire fences and contaminated enough that no sane persons wants to go near them.

Go Nuclear!

Not exactly:

> Approximately one month after the spill, the Puerco River had regained normal levels of salinity, acidity, and radioactivity at low flow levels, with contaminants being detectable only after heavy rains.

Natural uranium is mildly radioactive, but it was a uranium mine. The radioactivity was there before they started. They managed to move it around some. The damage was at least as much attributable to the chemical contaminants which would be present in any similar mining incident regardless of what they were mining.

Saying that it was worse than Three Mile Island is a low bar. Three Mile Island wasn't exactly Chernobyl.

Highly radioactive materials are couriered around all the time for medical purposes.

Edit: my point being, dangerously radioactive materials are valuable products of nuclear power, not just pollution that comes as a side effect.

> how much you value indigenous lives over corporations...

Why is this the dichotomy for supporting modern nuclear power plants? Or in this case a uranium processing plants?

Especially compared to burning burning and mining coal.

It's not. The point is that antagonists of nuclear power need scary scenarios to make it effective, and "poisoning tons of people that you don't care about" isn't one of them.

If you want an argument against new nuclear power, you need to look no further than at the costs of production:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

That's a projected 92£ per MWh, with likely further costs increases.

Compare that to currently around 60€ / MWh for new solar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity

It’s too bad that the anti nuclear green activists succeeded. We could be on our way to achieving a realistic 0 carbon future by now.

Well There's Your Problem did an episode on that: https://youtu.be/34rdxDgpaaA

Should probably add a disclaimer for people who expect a dry engineering history podcast! wtypp is truly excellent, but go in expecting irreverence

My favorite radioactive contamination story is the truck in Juarez that was unknowingly contaminated with Cobalt-60 pellets. The truck died (for unrelated reason) and was scrapped and melted down in an iron foundry. The contamination was only discovered by accident when a truckload of rebar made a wrong turn in Los Alamos National Laboratories and set off a radiation alarm. They managed to track down the truck, find the source of the radiation, and get rid of the contaminated metal. Fortunately, nobody died.

https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/accidents/juarez.htm

I live near an aluminum foundry and everything going in goes through a radiation detector.

Same with waste incineration plants, for the same resons - apparently it is sensitive enough to detect even diapers with radio contrast therapy residue inside a full garbage truck.

Some airports got these post-911. They were called "granny detectors" because rather than finding dirty bombs they always found the old person who just underwent a scan using radioactive tracer.

They reality is that many medical procedures irradiate patients. Many dead bodies, if they were not human, would be radioactive enough to be considered hazardous.

> Many dead bodies, if they were not human, would be radioactive enough to be considered hazardous.

I'm curious, can they be (safely) cremated?

Well... they are. A more interesting question is whether such people should be allowed out of hospital. For all the people afraid of letting thier kids play near cellphone towers, perhaps they shouldn't hug grandma for a while after such procedures.

Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...

In 1989, a small capsule containing highly radioactive caesium-137 was found inside the concrete wall of an apartment building, with a surface gamma radiation exposure dose rate of 1800 R/year.

The source, originally a part of a radiation level gauge, was lost in the Karansky quarry. The gravel from the quarry was used in construction. The cesium capsule ended up in the concrete panel of Apartment 85 of Building 7 on Gvardeytsev Kantemirovtsev Street, between apartments 85 and 52.

Over 9 years, two families lived in Apartment 85. A child's bed was located directly next to the wall containing the capsule. By the time the capsule was discovered, 4 residents of the building had died from leukemia and 17 more had received varying doses of radiation. The accident was detected only after the residents requested that the level of radiation be measured in the apartment by a health physicist. Part of the wall was removed and sent to the Institute for Nuclear Research (NASU), where the cesium capsule was removed and disposed of.

The total number of deaths is alternately reported as 2, 4 (3 children and one adult), or 6 (4 children and 2 adults).

Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

Or this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acerinox_accident

In May 1998, a caesium-137 source managed to pass through the monitoring equipment in an Acerinox scrap metal reprocessing plant in Los Barrios, Spain. When melted, the caesium-137 caused the release of a radioactive cloud. The Acerinox chimney detectors failed to detect it, but it was eventually detected in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The radioactive levels measured were up to 1000 times higher than normal.

How harmful is 1000 times higher than normal?

This makes me want to get a radiation detector to test the places where I hang out.

How expensive is something like this?

you can build your own https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14209

That's cool, and cheap at 70. But it doesn't detect alpha radiation. Unless I missed something.

You can shield yourself from alpha with two sheets of paper.

You can still inhale and swallow it, internally it is more harmful than beta or gamma.

What about washable face masks?

You can inhale those too but it's much harder.

Hardyhar

So they said in about the paper hat conspiracy.

$130 or less, shipped.

https://soeks-usa.com/collections/radiation-detectors/produc...

You already have your smartphone, most probably: https://phys.org/news/2014-06-smartphone-detector-app-positi...

Smartphone cameras are sensitive to radiation (radiation produces additional spurious reading in camera sensors - additional noise over thermal one) and it is possible to use these cameras to more or less accurately measure radiation levels.

Couldn't someone make an app?

I looked into this once because I live near a reactor. There's a wide range of quality, but these restored classic ones have a good reputation for $250.

http://www.prepguard.com/prepguard-geiger-counter-radiation-...

It looks like China(and potentially other places) are willing to accept incredibly dangerous(and expensive to recycle) material and melt it into their main steel supply. After all, cobalt diluted into a supply of steel is harmless, right?

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/radioactive-metal-tiss....

I would really like to know how much of a problem is it, how much of global steel supply is tainted. Can we be buying cars and other items made with steel that's contaminated?

It should be easy enough to check with a geiger counter, right?

The article you linked to said the shipment came from India...

Either way, this is a legitimate concern that's happened in scrap metal processing all over the world: https://web.archive.org/web/20060614013429/http://www.iaea.o...

Another interesting tidbit (and how I found the above pdf): all steel made after 1940 is slightly radioactive due to nuclear testing, and unsuitable for high sensitivity applications. Some ships sunk in WWI are the primary source of all low-background steel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

The references there mislead - The article concerning the ships states "minor salvage is still carried out to recover small pieces of steel" - "Primary" is an overstatement. In reality, a steel manufacturer can produce low background steel by using virgin ore for the smelting, but must know in advance of the run and be advised not to incorporate recycled material (including alloying agents). Some are willing to accommodate such requests for additional cost.

Interestingly, they (unwittingly) did experiment on this in Taiwan [1]. Smaller doses efdect is nowere as clear-cut as large ones.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/

There's also this place with very high (naturally caused) background radiation, and the residents have also remained quite healthy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Mazandaran#Radioactivi...

Back when the US was still interested in nuclear non-proliferation, they sponsored (together with the EU) the installation of radiation detection equipment at borders and other chokepoints, mostly in poorer countries.

These are fixed installations, monitoring mostly truck traffic 24/7, so their effectiveness doesn't depend on available manpower or current interest. Eastern Europe from Poland to the -stans has a lot of them, because former soviet republics had a lot of radioactive material lying around that was suddenly less important and even less guarded after the Cold War.

(Scientists were also suddenly out of work, and feared to be receptive to corruption. Fun fact: George Soros spent dozens of millions of his own money to empty a bunch of nuclear physicists in the 90s).

The point being: if it were a widespread problem, it would definitely be noticed.

>George Soros spent dozens of millions of his own money to empty a bunch of nuclear physicists

Is there anything this monster won't do?

Sorry for the autocorrect-induced confusion: he "employed" these people, obviously.

The purpose being to keep them busy and well-fed, preventing them from handing over nuclear material to terrorists for cash.

If it wasn't the mixed-up word or irony, I'd be really confused how this could be likened to the actions of a "monster".

I'm no fan of Soros but in this particular case I was imagining the process of emptying scientists indeed

How, exactly, does one “empty” a person?

employ

Psychologically abuse them for months or years, place impossible to meet expectations in front of them and tell them that any attempt to meet them is wrong before they've even started to make an effort. Let them be open and vulnerable with you and punish them for it, then later demand they be open and vulnerable and only randomly punish them for doing so. Oh and the entire time you are putting them through this, trivialize their emotions and show them that they're wrong for having them.

That should be a good start.

Can you provide a source for this claim that Soros employed nuclear physicists? After spending a few minutes searching online I can find no evidence of such a thing happening.

Google [soros physicists] and it's full of documentation. I. e. https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199708/soros.cfm

And copper. People stripping contaminated cabling out of old soviet nuclear test sites and selling it as scrap was a major problem in Kazakhstan in the 90's through to the early 2010's. Everything has since been backfilled with concrete, but not before the majority of the cabling entered the supply chain. A long-distance haulier I know found himself surrounded by police with machine guns at Dover, after his truck lit up like a Christmas tree on radiation detectors - he was carrying scrap copper from Romania, which had apparently come from Kaz. That load got stopped, because it went through a radiation detector at a port - but you've got to wonder where the other tens of thousands of tonnes that were lifted ended up over the years.

Here's an article on the cleanup, which mentions the copper theft as an aside:

https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/article/one-greate...

ctrl-f for "china" on your source doesn't even turn up any results. You're spreading FUD.

Jesus, I've said "China and other places" for a reason, there were plenty of examples of exactly this happening with Chinese steel[0], but this was the most recent example of contaminated steel entering consumer products that I could find.

[0] https://recyclinginternational.com/business/radioactive-elem....

You said: "China(and potentially other places)". You explicitly put it in a seperate category when the source you linked didn't.

Notice the weasel word "plenty", you're still trying to imply there's something special going on there when this whole thread is full of people talking about steel contamination going on globally.

You also claimed they "are willing to accept incredibly dangerous(and expensive to recycle) material and melt it into their main steel supply." when your own article is about radioactive contamination being tracked down in a way that indicates that it's not the norm.

Here's an article about China explicitly denying radioactive scrap. None of the examples involving other countries in this thread seemed willful either.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1996/07/03/China-demands-check-...

I find something in this story puzzling - why were the IGR owners charged? Based on the story as published on Wikipedia, they tried to recover the unit, but they were officially barred to do so.

When faced with tragedy some people need to know "who was guilty", so this leads to lots of lawsuits like this.

Lack of education led to the trespassing of property, zero knowledge of radiation to believing it was supernatural, the justice system preventing the cleanup, etc. Means there is no single point of guilt and its hard for people to grasp this.

That part of the article is poorly phrased and leaves out some important information on the judgement. There's a link to an issue of Nuclear Law Bulletin that provides better detail.

The biggest charges were ordered to be paid by CNEN (since preventing this kind of accident is part of their job, and they were notified of the potential danger well in advance) and IPASGO (the new owners of the site, who were also aware of the danger and didn't really do anything about it). Finally as you say, two people from IGR (the clinic that moved out) were also charged, because they removed "gates, windows, timberwork and the roof" from the facility while leaving the radioactive device for later - which might also explain why the new owners eventually got pissed and decided to lock them out.

In short the whole thing was a collective train wreck, but the most obvious failure seems to be that CNEN should have taken action immediately after being notified of the danger. Hopefully they're a bit more reactive now.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120318233148/http://www.oecd-n...

Another: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

For anyone else interested in the topic of radiological accidents, check out the reports published by the IAEA. https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/pub815_web.pd...

Curiously like in the series Chernobyl, the first person to take radiation measurements at the scene in Goiania thought his equipment was faulty, because it measured at the maximum of the scale.

> For more radiation horror

I'll skip, thanks. I already get enough horror stories and don't need wacky outliers leaning on my brain's various failure modes. Like, it took me less than ten seconds to find a news article from last month in a specific city titled "family of 5 killed in car crash". I can't spend my anxiety on things that are so much less dangerous than anything else I do in a given day.

> *Now, this is probably nothing. The sensors are doing their thing and from time to time there is a spike.

I can't imagine that the engineers at that monitoring station wouldn't check for measuring errors before releasing such a statement.

These sensors can be incredibly sensitive and can capture contamination from small technical or medical radiation sources over a long distance.

What is much more of a mystery is how little we understand about the effects of low-dose radiation. In Germany, there was a study started after since 1990 a cluster of leukemia cases appeared around a specific power plant near Hamburg. So, a large statistical study was done about the incidence of leukemia in all of Germany, and whether there is a correlation with distance to power plants. There was a correlation found (http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0221-20100317939), the incidence of Lekuemia appears about 50% higher - but we don't know why. The classical radiation-dosis effect models do not explain what is observed.

As there were no significant contamination accidents in Germany, there is some suspicion about the effects of low-dose radiation. Of course, the largest case of low-dose contamination in Western Europe and Germany was the Chernobyl accident from 1986. There have been some statistical large-scales studies which observed (small) changes in sex ratios (that is, the quotient of male and female offspring) https://archive.org/details/pubmed-PMC3765590/mode/2up . But still, these are only correlations.

One train of thought has been that low-level radiation could effect the expression of genetic information. The field of study which looks at this is called epigenetics. It turns out that the working of the genetic "code" is surprisingly complex. It is not like a app package that gets installed on your PC, but it is rather a very complex self-modifying program which reacts to different environmental factors during installation. Now, there is some research of which factors could affect gene expression and how radation could play a role:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=epig...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03783...

This is by far not mainstream research, but the fact that we have no explanation for the correlation between incidence of leukemia and distance to nuclear plants points at that the classical models are missing something significant and we do not know yet the whole picture.

I remember seeing the Goiania accident on the news. I was seven years old. It was not scary for me back then as it is right now.

I could have been a poster child for the "Eu amo Goiânia" campaign (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp8bq6kgCu8). I lived in Rio but had family in Goiânia and was visiting them when the accident happened.

School was tough for a couple of weeks...

So, it seems to come from nuclear fission, likely of civilian origin, and perhaps originating from fuel elements:

> The Netherland's public health agency said Friday it analysis of Nordic data showed that radionuclides had come "from the direction of Western Russia," indicating "damage to a fuel element in a nuclear power plant."

> On Friday, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) tweeted that its sensors had detected "harmless" isotopes, identified as Caesium 137, Caesium 134, and Ruthenium 103, "very much probably of civilian origin." > > According to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency based in Vienna, Western Europe has 108 reactors and Central and Eastern Europe 73 reactors.

https://www.dw.com/en/slight-radioactivity-rise-in-nordic-co...

The presence uf Ruthenium-103 indicates that these are fresh fission products because it has a half-life of only 39 days (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_ruthenium).

So, it is not impossible that it is a leak in a civil reactor.

The Goiania accident sounds like the source of the plot for Pu-239

Do you think it might be related to this event? (linked below ) I'm going to make a guess, that there might have been a nuclear detonation. It probably wasn't a test. This seems to be an accident. Not all weapons are accounted for, e.g. there a American hydrogen bombs lost in Spain (I know... it sounds crazy but look it up.). Could there have been a bomb laying around someone in a place everyone forgot existed maybe some forgotten relic from the Soviet day?

A GLOBAL MAGNETIC ANOMALY: On June 23rd, Earth’s quiet magnetic field was unexpectedly disturbed by a wave of magnetism that rippled around much of the globe. There was no solar storm or geomagnetic storm to cause the disturbance. So what was it?

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/25/weird-out-of-nowhere-...

What the hell? Thanks for this, haven't seen anything about this anywhere.

Maybe because only specialists even took note of this. The article itself states that it's more like "hearing a pin drop".

If you look at the scales on the included diagrams, you might note that these "ripples" are on the order of a few nT.

The natural variation of the magnetic field can be 2 orders of magnitude higher, so the real story here is that they were even able to pick this up in the first place...

Cool, thanks.

It basically impossible the lost bombs from old broken arows woild detonate i nuclear way (the conventional explosive might still explode and contaminate a small area).

Even if you discount machinery still working after being embedded in the ground or unde water any neutron initiators or bateries would have lomg sonce became unusable.

There’s a huge risk of abandoned nuclear weapons self detonating. Russian ICBMs (used to?) have safeties that failed “deadly”. They had to run around and turn them off during the 90’s so they didn’t self-deploy. That was a huge problem because they had lost track of some of them.

Also, the soviet’s “Dead Hand” is still active.

It is a dead man’a switch that’s designed to automatically destroy the world if it detects the initial phase of a nuclear war. It could easily fail in a way that caused a false positive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

I’m sure other countries have equally problematic aging arsenals.

Almost certainly not. A nuclear detonation would also produce noticeable seismic effects as well as release iodine-131, which was not detected.

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2020/06/various-re... reports that Iodine 131 was measured in Norway during the week of June 2-8.

Ok, but that's two weeks off from this detection.

From what I can see in the article, its source is explained:

“Pc waves are classified into 5 types depending on their period. The 10-minute wave on June 23rd falls into category Pc5. Slow Pc5 waves have been linked to a loss of particles from the van Allen radiation belts. Energetic electrons surf these waves down into Earth’s atmosphere, where they dissipate harmlessly.”

Since everyone is saying Russia, I just want to include a map of reactor locations. It may be Russia, but there are quite a few reactors in the area.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/%D0%90%D...

An unreported release of radionuclides from a Western European reactor would be much more surprising.

Yeah, I was surprised that there are a handful of reactors of the same type as Chernobyl (RBMK-1000) still online. For example west of St. Petersburg ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Nuclear_Power_Plant )

They did substantial renovation to control the more interesting characteristics of the design. CANDU has an excellent safety record despite the same external moderation technique.

“On the next episode of ‘This Old Reactor’...”

The power power/to cost radio of RBMK is still pretty good, as well other aspects (online refueling, isotope production, good scalability - there were plans for RBMK 2400 and RBMK 4800 etc.).

If it just were not for the few desing flaws that make them unstable and dangerous in some situations.

Unless they too were unaware of it.

In Germany they tried to use Chernobyl to hide a reactor accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300

Thanks for the link, it's fascinating:

> some radioactive dust was released to the environment. This happened just a couple of days after the Chernobyl disaster. The operators played down the incident, which caused a loss of confidence in the regulatory authorities.

Radiactive dust is not a small problem, it's fatal if inhaled. Skin can stop a lot of radiation, but dust in the lungs is a worst-case scenario.

> THTR-300 was only in full service for 423 days

It was dismantled after only 4(!) operating calendar years because of rising costs and lack of faith in the regulation process. Of course, the government is on the hook for the overruns. What a disaster.

Oh, exactly the same things the HN nuclear apologists gloss over.

The challenge in the US is that most reactors have their operating permits rubber-stamped to extend 20 additional years. It means they're active much longer than designed, inviting corrosion and brittleness problems, and the operator can avoid paying for the decommissioning "until later," when it's somebody else's problem, usually the tax payer.

Hence why nuclear reactors need to be stopped before construction even begins.

There's also the Astravets plant in Belarus, of which the first reactor is due to come online later this year. The initial batch of fuel was received last month.

The plant has sparked some tensions in the area, especially with Lithuanian, as it's being constructed on the border, 28 miles from the Lithuanian capital.

The likely region in yellow: https://twitter.com/SinaZerbo/status/1276559857731153921

I wonder, could it be related to the Nyonoksa radiation incident in Russia in 2019? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident

As someone who follows Russian news and political atmosphere. Here’s what’s been happening there as of late: Corona, sanctions and the tremendous drop in oil prices have hit the Russian economy very hard and the situation is projected to get worse. Putin’s rating is the worst it has ever been and the US is currently bipartisan on new, much worse sanctions (rightly so). Putin is becoming desperate. The last time his rating began to drop the invasion of Crimea propped it back up to 90%+ (Russians apparently love invading weak neighbors for territory) and staid that way for a long time despite sanctions and western pressure. Recently, in consistence with the drop in ratings, the saber rattling against Ukraine has picked up a lot. Russia has massed even more troops on the Ukrainian border and preformed a huge mock invasion exercise from Crimea (US reacted by flying stealth bombers in the area). Last week Putin also gave a huge inflammatory interview claiming that Ukraine and other exsoviet countries illegally left the USSR with rightfully Russian territories (a lie). Many see these events as the preparation for another invasion of Ukraine. These nuclear fission byproducts can potentially be the result of Russian weapons tests in preparation for military action that may result in NATO reaction (Ukraine received enhanced NATO status earlier this month, likely in response to the saber rattling). The last time nuclear fission byproducts were detected in the region (last year I believe), it was due to Russia testing a new nuclear engine powered missile with near unlimited range and maneuverability. This missile spews radioactive byproducts as it flies and creates a mini Chernobyl (along with an explosion due to a payload in addition to its reactor engine) where ever it hits. A similar missile was tested in the US but scrapped due to the potential damage to the environment. This of course is just one of many possible explanations for this detection.

They believe USSR won WW2 by itself - there was no war before June 1941, no Lend-Lease, without Allies they would seize entire Europe. And no, not free, no self determination allowed [1]. Then they would certainly beat Japan by themself - it is just an island. Afghanistan was another territory that could be ours.

Putin plays on ideology created by USSR. Lie, lie, nothing but lie. Bolsheviks invented a lot in terrorism. It takes century to unfold. ISIS followed same book [2].

Sorry to bring it here, it is awful they want to start it again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring

[2] https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/islamic-state-and-bol...

For anyone reading this. Sorry for no references, but it should be known (contrary the attention given by Hollywood etc) that SSR, if I'm not mistaken, did weaken Hitler before D day significantly, and were the ones turning the tide for the Russians. They also lost and killed a LOT more than the allied troops. Partly because they were more reckless with men (considered less worth compared to the allied mindset), but also because they fought more. Then, could they have won alone? No idea. Nobody knows of course.

Don't buy the Hollywood perspective on WW2 without first considering that it's far from the full picture. For example, China/Japan details are not as well known in western world, but a significant situation and part of the conflict with lots of people killed, which also happened before 1939 partly.

As always, it's more complicated...

It's not unknown that taking on Russia stretched Nazi Germany's resources. However it is also known that between 1939 and 1941 Russia and Germany had an accord and were allies. That was until Germany invaded russia is 1941. So the German army that invaded russia in 1941 had already been fighting Britain and the allied forces for 2 years, significantly weakening them and stretching their resources.

"between 1939 and 1941 Russia and Germany had an accord and were allies"

That's false. Russia and Germany had a non-aggression pact. Also you should read about the Munich Agreement[0], that preceded the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and clearly shown that no one was willing to fight Germany and protect Czechoslovakia besides the USSR.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement

You say potato...

You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.

The fact is that the USSR and Germany signed a non-aggression pact, not a treaty of alliance. You can read the text [0] yourself and see that there is nothing resembling a war alliance.

[0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pa...

I clearly looks like an alliance to take over other countries.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pa...

They even divided Poland in a coordinated attack on two fronts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_military...

It is not the name that matters but content and actions.

Oh, the start of the war was awful in so many aspects, there were no rights. Second Polish Republic was aggressive state [1], [2]. It partitioned Czechoslovakia with Germany and Hungary in 1938. Soviets border on Poland lies about what was defined in Treaty of Versailles [3]. It does not excuse anything just show mixed things were. Have no idea about other parts of the German Soviet border [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Czechoslovak_bo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Border_a...

Have you actually read the content?

Can we agree that both Germany and USSR gained territories as result [1], [2]? And they were trade partners [3]? And, yes, France and UK helped that to happen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Baltic_state...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Credit_A...

The USSR gained so much needed strategic depth, the Germany gained Lebensraum.

Which country wasn't trading with Nazi Germany?

"Germany gained so much needed strategic depth" - somehow Germany evil, USSR not - flawed logic

You are welcome to present a Soviet equivalent of the Lebensraum concept.

Gulag [1], Purges [2], man made famine [3], restriction of movement [4], population as means for World Revolution [5], imperialism [6].

Bolsheviks were terrorists [7], the state evolved from terrorists organisation. It should be shamed just as we shame Fascists. Meanwhile in Russia Stalin popularity is record high [8].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_system_in_the_Soviet_...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_revolution

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Empire

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

[8] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47975704

It has nothing to do with Lebensraum.

It walks like a duck and sounds like a duck. You can call it whatever you want, the ethos is the same.

We are talking about motivation for getting territories.

All that the parent comment listed doesn't have anything to do with that.

Have you red it? My point by marshal USSR Georgy Zhukov on Moscow Victory Parade of 1945 [1]:

> By the combined efforts of the great powers of the USSR, USA, UK fascist Germany was defeated in the ashes

That victory was rebirth of USSR. Heroes returned home, no way to rule them as before. But wounds were not allowed to heal, 9 May become day of "we were attacked, still plenty of enemies around". Russians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Georgians, Moldovan (and many others) fought together. USSR attacked Czechoslovakia, Russia attacked Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine.

Somehow your counterexample is loss and contribution. I never said there was not.

> "turning the tide for the Russians^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H USSR"

By USSR census Russians 53%, Ukrainians 21%, even Slavs would be incorrect - 78%. Census 1937 [3] was not published because of the man-made famine [4] consequences. Official position - there was no such thing.

Hardly anyone knows about occupation of Poland [5], Baltic states [6] and War with Finland [7].

Could they have won war alone? No. Germans occupied a lot of industrial territories with Blitzkrieg, not enough time to restart factories [8]. Without support there would be no Moscow and Stalingrad. There would be guerilla war but that's not enough.

Back to topic. In Russia it is believed that after taking Berlin soldiers should have fought Allies. That's liberation war for you.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gzZoVm-joc&t=20m23s

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1926)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Poland_(1939%E2%...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Baltic_state...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_in_the_Soviet_Union

> Back to topic. In Russia it is believed that after taking Berlin soldiers should have fought Allies. That's liberation war for you.

And they were not the only ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

Sure there were war plans then and from both sides. But those in command understood what could and could not be done. Soviet soldiers knew about allies - both as force and support (food, trucks etc). It was liberation war, it is not clear would they turn weapons on allies or stupid rulers.

I mean today, when hardly any solder left alive.

"In Russia it is believed that after taking Berlin soldiers should have fought Allies."

[Citation needed]

It is hard to cite what is in the air. I am transcribing what was programmed by state media. It was generally believed that we could. And how big our country is a treasure by itself. So we should. Liberated countries owe use and should live just as we are, otherwise they are traitors.

Some facts - signs "On Berlin" (На Берлин) [1]? Anyone else want this war again?

But best mark is the leader support [2]:

> In January 2013, at the time of 2011–2013 Russian protests, Putin's approval rating fell to 62%, the lowest figure since 2000 and a ten-point drop over two years. By May 2014, following the annexation of Crimea, Putin's approval rating had rebounded to 85.9%, a six-year high.

... improved after aggression on "brother Slavs", war in neighboring country, tanked economy [3], [4].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Vladimir_Putin...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_financial_crisis_(2014...

[4] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

You are not making sense.

Nothing in what you have written has any relation to your statement: "In Russia it is believed that after taking Berlin soldiers should have fought Allies".

So you do not understand that country leader makes a crime against his people. Puts relatives on different sides of war. That response to his actions programmed by schools and state owned media.

That Germans resolved this conflict and leave on. And Russians cling for their only perceived superiority as war machine like there is nothing else to be proud of. Like it is zero sum game - their own victory and noones else.

You are not alone - their is entire country.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23668700

"They believe USSR won WW2 by itself"

Considering that about 80% of German losses happened on the Eastern front, this isn't far from the truth.

Meanwhile, the White House claims that the war was won by the US and the GB [0]. And the US embassy in Denmark 'inadvertently' claims that Auschwitz was liberated by the Americans.[1]

[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/whitehouse/status/125884241152413...

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/usembdenmark/status/1222249721554...

It is not the same don't you think? Would it be possible to feed, transport army, cover by aviation etc without support [1]? Would it be possible if there was only one front? And even if it was that is not what happened. Truth should be respected.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

---

That claim on twitter is stupid but so is "USSR only"

"Would it be possible if there was only one front?"

The second front was opened only in 1944 when the outcome of the war was clear.

"Truth should be respected."

The truth clearly isn't respected in the West. You could see it in the American government statements, you can see that in these French polls: https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sondage...

"That claim on twitter is stupid but so is "USSR only""

Nope, you cannot equate these two things. Again, about 80% of German divisions were destroyed by the USSR.

You have not answered Lend Lease point.

So you fight lie with your lie.

Your view is so one-sided that it is easy to accept opposite one-sided view. Not allies, not entire world - "it is all USA because USSR claims everything for itself, you can't trust these USSR liers".

The USSR won the Great Patriotic War. It had some help from Allies, people in Russia are aware of it.

And what you see in the White House tweeter is a lie.

It is actually worse.

That claim is about Western Europe only [0]. Think about it. Without USA and UK entire Europe would be occupied by USSR. Litva claimed it was liberated in 1993 (48 years after end of war). I never understood them until one day.

My country was attacked without declaration of war in June 22, 1941.

My country was attacked without declaration of war in February 27, 2014.

It opens eyes.

I can't be sure but people from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Mongolia, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine may understand. You may check what do they think about Russia, like Poland [3].

Russian government antagonizes these countries. It does not matter because its real enemies are its own people.

----

Navalny claims "27 millions Russians" - that number is entire USSR [1], Russia loss 13,950,000; Ukraine loss 6,850,000.

[0] Sorry, Russian language source for now https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-52611746

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

[3] first link I've found - conveniently omits partitioning czechoslovakia and early years but is representative https://www.znak.com/2020-01-17/chto_v_polshe_dumayut_o_ross...

Please stay on topic. You are not bringing up anything I don't already know and what you bring up is irrelevant to the discussion.

Reducing winning down to body counts is precisely what was the problem with Vietnam. Materiel, production, logistics, money to fund it all.

It would be more precise to say the Russians were an American mercenary army. They were pretty much funded by them, most materiel was US produced and delivered for free.

Closer, but too simplistic - USSR had its own industry [0]. But it was in heavy need of aviation, heavy trucks, locomotives, fuel, ammunition and food for army. A lot of supplies were captured in Operation Barbarossa. Wikipedia has better description [1]:

> In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $11 billion in materials: over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386 of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans); 11,400 aircraft (4,719 of which were Bell P-39 Airacobras) and 1.75 million tons of food.

Compare with totals [2], check out USSR tanks production (119,583) [3]. And Lend Lease resources were not free - they had to be payed back.

The brilliance of USA move was helping others to fight their enemy. You can always replace goods but no way to replace a man. Without USSR they would loose a lot. Quite possibly there would be no USA today.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_industry_in_World_War_I...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wor...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_combat_vehicle_producti...

Well, there is a reason hiring mercenaries is usually regarded as a shady proposition. But you're right, Russia and America made a good match in WW2. It's just an angle that's not often illuminated (thanks for your far better post btw) and as always in this story, it's so sad that ordinary Russians ultimately paid the price. I wish that part also was shown differently (in Russia). Russia was not a casualty, Russians were. And Russians certainly did not win this war.

"And Russians certainly did not win this war."

We most certainly did, we still exist as a nation.

If there ever was a people divorced from its nationstate, its Russia. I know the propaganda department does not allow for critical thinking on this matter, but Russians did not win, and have never really won.

That I hope will change someday.

You remind me of people in the Soviet Union brainwashed by the propaganda and confident that it is all true.

We have shook off that and got quite a cynical attitude.

I see you haven't done the same.

I don't have a hope that it will change someday.

Not sure what you mean. What I hope is a human Russian history, not dictated by what passes for government there. An honest confrontation with the past, and not a Hollywood interpretation meant to match the US and to cover up the horrors that have occurred.

What you offer ("It would be more precise to say the Russians were an American mercenary army.") by far beats the craziest Hollywood interpretations.

You ignore USSR and Bolsheviks crimes, you know better than USSR marshal about "combined efforts", you look quite brainwashed.

No, I don't.

Well, define winning. Here the looser side(s) still exists not only as a nation, but also as flourishing economy, human rights, democracy, welfare etc. Russia has only the yearly parades.

The USSR lost the Cold War.

I believe he is about wining like German population did. There was no Nuremberg trials on Soviet leaders. Millions killed but nothing.

Is this what they teach in American schools?

The idea that the US bought millions of Soviet lives is as ridiculous as it is insulting.

The Soviet people fought in an existential war, the defeat meant death in concentration camps for some, and life as slaves for others.

All the stuff the USSR got in the lend-lease, while much appreciated, is a small fraction of the resources the USSR commited to the war.

"delivered for free"

You understand that it was called "lend-lease" for a reason?

I wouldnt know what they teach Americans in school. See sibling comment for why youre wrong.

Nothing is less disrespectful than not telling the story of ordinary people, in favor of national or foreign narratives.

I know the story of the ordinary people. They are my grandparents.

I don't know in what kind of warped reality you live if you write things like 'the Russians were an American mercenary army'.

"Then they would certainly beat Japan by themself - it is just an island."

Why not? It took the USSR only 11 days to defeat the Kwantung Army (0.7 million soldiers) in the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria

Would you want to be soviet soldier in 1942 discussing these ideas?

I suppose you would've preferred to be an American pilot dropping nuclear bombs on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I suppose you would've preferred to be in NKVD interrogating and killing harmless people by thousands

Don't see the connection.

On the SE edge of the marked area Belarus is building a power plant. It is scheduled to go online July 2020 [1]. Can it be that fuel loading took place and somehow it got out and wind blew the particles towards east? (similar direction as in Chernobyl's case)

Pure speculation, but I'm Lithuanian and I'm concerned about a foreign country building a power plant 45km from my capital. CTBTO not disclosing their guess about the source makes me think it's a sensitive geopolitical matter. I just hope nothing serious has happened, but you never know with 2020.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astravets_Nuclear_Power_Plant

I understand the political reason for not naming the reactors/nation-states most likely responsible for the release but I don't understand the lack of context. Why wasn't short-lived iodine-131 detected along with the caesium-134, caesium-137 and ruthenium-103? How do the measured levels of the long-lived caesium/ruthenium isotopes compare to known events like Fukushima? How do these measured levels compare to known nuclear weapon tests?

I'm worried about the geopolitical implications, not the global health implications.

The release likely happened during fuel reprocessing. Since fuel is left to cool for at least several months before reprocessing, there’s essentially no I-131 left at that point.

But then, why would Ru-103 be present, which has a half-life of 9 days?

https://www.dw.com/en/slight-radioactivity-rise-in-nordic-co...

Ruthenium-103 has a half-life of 39 days.

How does the spent fuel get aerosolized and into the atmosphere? Some of the more recent comments link to a site that detected iodine-131 in Norway. Vented hydrogen/steam from partially uncovered fuel rods (e.g. Three Mile Island, Fukushima) in an active boiling water reactor is historically the most likely source (I think) but iodine-131 should be abundant. The same principle should apply to any nuclear powered submarine or ship. Other commenters point out that Russia has nuclear powered missiles and torpedoes that emit radiation. I expect the CTBTO to be able to categorize the nature of each radiation source but maybe that type of analysis takes time.

>How does the spent fuel get aerosolized and into the atmosphere?

I'm not an expert, but fuel reprocessing is generally done is an aqueous state. The widely used PUREX process, for example, starts with dissolving the spent fuel in nitric acid. Splashing or boiling the liquids involved will cause the formation of aerosols. In particular, concentrated nitric acid tends to react with things quite vigorously, generating a lot of heat. The process also uses flammable liquids like kerosene and hydrazine.

Some radioisotopes also have compounds that are volatile. Ruthenium, in particular can form Ruthenium Tetroxide which boils at only 40C.

103Ru has a 39-day half life. 134Cs has a 2 yr half life, 137Cs has a 30-year half life.

131I has an 8 day half-life.

One can use those numbers to infer, in the absence of supporting chains, how-recently the released material was involved in a fission reaction.

iodine-131 was apparently detected June 2-8

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2020/06/various-re...

To those saying it's nothing: Lookup the historical data and compare. Chernobyl caused 0.1 mSv/h in radiation in Sweden, this incident caused 0.18 mSv/h in Helsinki. Only two short spikes over one week, Chernobyl was over two weeks, but certainly not harmless. These are deadly poisons. https://www.stralsakerhetsmyndigheten.se/contentassets/66f4f...

It's either one of the old Chernobyl-like pressure water reactors in Tallin or St Petersburg. Really interesting is also why the control commission in Vienna is not allowed to call them out.

> old Chernobyl-like pressure water reactors in Tallin or St Petersburg

You must be confusing Tallinn with some other city - Estonia does not and has not had any nuclear power plants.

The map covers Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Russia. Estonia and Latvia have no nuclear power or weapons programs, and the first four are EU countries where staying silent about an incident would be very unlikely. That leaves Russia.

Interestingly enough the possible source area includes the Arkhangelsk naval base, where the Russian nuclear submarine fleet is stationed. An incident there may explain the lack of information.

I think Arkhangelsk being involved seems likely. The Russian ship "Akademik Aleksandrov" aka Project 20183 was apparently in that area recently[1], and seems obviously related to Poseidon[2]. If the source of the radiation were a Poseidon, that would certainly explain the secrecy.

As for claims of the fission products coming from a "civil source", I don't think enough is known about Poseidon's reactors to rule that out. I could be wrong, but as far as I've read the details of that reactor are up in the air (besides being small, obviously.)

[1] https://twitter.com/FrankBottema/status/1276930424170844162

[2] http://www.hisutton.com/Akademik-Aleksandrov.html

I don't see why Swedish or Finnish plant operators would not stay silent for a few days, while working to establish what an incident was or caused by.

Mandates are mandates. You can only say and do what you are authorized to say and do. Overstepping other agencies' jurisdictions is a guaranteed way to garner negative attention.

Eg: In Canada people are trying to push the Prime Minister into releasing Meng back to China. But the government is strictly separate from the legal/court system to avoid the type of corruption one sees the US Dept of Justice accused of right now. So yes, he very well might be able to push the matter through loopholes or influence, but the very same people pushing him to do it would also decry corruption and call him a dictator if he did so. So he won't overstep that boundary.

Additionally, I used to provide technical expert witness services in certain types of court cases. I had to state only things that I can back up as part of my expertise. I had to use the word 'apparent' and 'presumed' a lot, even when file names were so extremely obvious. I couldn't refer to a hacker as a hacker in certain contexts - they're simply "suspects" etc. As a technical expert, I spoke to the technology and not the person or any literal content.

It's exactly the same reason you see the word "alleged" used in the news even when it is super obvious the "alleged" facts are obviously true -- Jurisdiction and authority to state specifics as fact.

> this incident caused 0.18 mSv/h in Helsinki.

Do you have source for this? This is likely just normal natural background radiation.

The natural background seems to be around 0.13-0.16 µSv/h in Helsinki: https://www.stuk.fi/web/en/topics/environmental-radiation/ra... (select a station to see history).

Seems there is unit confusion as it only rose to 0.18 µSv/h in Helsinki, not to 0.18 mSv/h which would exceed Chernobyl impact.

Oops, wrong by factor 1000. Thanks! It was only a very small picture, and I mixed up the µ spike with m.

> this incident caused 0.18 mSv/h in Helsinki

According to graphs here https://www.stuk.fi/web/en/topics/environmental-radiation/ra... it rose to 0.18 µSv/h, not mSv/h, which is just slightly above normal in the area (0.13-0.16 µSv/h depending on station, looks like)

Russia, damaged fuel rod.

https://www.rivm.nl/nieuws/radioactieve-stoffen-gedetecteerd...

21st century and the current top comment on HN is it's a random spike. Even though the article says it's not. This shouldn't be hard people.

This doesn't say that it was a damaged fuel rod, only that that is a possibility and that it has been discovered to be the cause of similar readings previously.

I'm not sure what more you want exactly? What are you suggesting it could be?

You have the data from multiple agencies, what fits?

I'm happy for alternatives, but multiple agencies say it's civilian and Russia. I want to leave this crazy, it's weapons and it's machine reading malfunctions threads.

So given the data what are you saying it could be?

This is why the comment section exists, to work towards to better understanding what is going on. Unless you are from Russia trying to sow doubt, you have to give a plausible alternative that fits the data. Saying it's possible it's something else is just sowing disinformation.

> I'm not sure what more you want exactly? What are you suggesting it could be?

Nothing. I'm pointing out the agency did not phrase it as strongly as you did for people who can't or don't want to read the article.

> This is why the comment section exists, to work towards to better understanding what is going on. Unless you are from Russia trying to sow doubt, you have to give a plausible alternative that fits the data. Saying it's possible it's something else is just sowing disinformation.

I'm no expert and not capable of judging whether people commenting know what they're talking about or not. All I see from official sources is that experts are saying that a leak from Western Russia is a likely possibility. I can wait until more concrete information comes out to make a judgement.

Something weird is that from 21:50 the 24 of June, the weather captors in the area reported a temperature of 60°C.

https://www.meteociel.fr/observations-meteo/temperatures.php...

That is very weird. Would an asteroid impact or airburst release radiation?

It might be due to a local wildfire.

https://www.bbc.com/weather/features/53014423

That seems much more likely

Could this be from the test of the nuclear powered hypersonic missile that Russia is developing [0]? Those things aren't designed to 'land' no pun intended

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik

My first guess is their nuclear powered torpedo, 'Poseidon', aka STATUS-6, or Kanyon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...

I'd sooner expect it in the Arctic Ocean, but who knows.

Edit: Some supporting evidence from twitter: https://twitter.com/FrankBottema/status/1276930424170844162

"The composition of the nuclides may indicate damage to a fuel element in a nuclear power plant. RIVM has made calculations to find out what may have been the origin of the detected radionuclides. These calculations show that the radionuclides come from the direction of Western Russia."

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

What's the base rate for this type of detection? Another commenter mentioned this is how Chernobyl was first reported, but I can't find anything on how often such things happen randomly without a catastrophic root cause.

I am quite disturbed to find that this is not a zero level base rate.

I remember the "CIA Whole Earth" from Snow Crash. I always thought that Google Earth would be something like that - some cross between a weather station and wikipedia.

> the "CIA Whole Earth" from Snow Crash

I was curious about this so here's some of the references I found (in the novel, it's "a piece of CIC software called, simply, Earth").

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=843

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash#Influence_on_the_Wo...

IIRC this was an (acknowledged!) inspiration for Google Earth.

> I am quite disturbed to find that this is not a zero level base rate.

speaking of disturbing factoids about radiation.. This is one of those nerdy cocktail topics I spout out about when i'm bored at a bar.[0]

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2321/

Nuclear energy is very safe, but to be safe it relies on the systems that support it. One of those systems is the economic system. I hope nothing bad has happened.

Probable sources would be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Nuclear_Power_Plant or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Notably the second uses RBMK-1000 reactors, the same as used in Chernobyl.

TASS says the operators of those claim that they are fine https://tass.com/world/1172279

EDIT: apologies; I commented under the parent when I meant to do under this comment about the Goiânia accident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23662601

My aunt still lives next door to the “Vigilância Sanitária” place where the material was quarantined.

At the time I was spending school holidays with my cousins and, after a day out, we came home to find the whole street blocked. Naturally we drove around the block and managed to get to their condo - a unit out of a set of three buildings.

We didn’t see any neighbours and it was only when we turned on the TV that we found out why. I guess the authorities forgot to block the entrance to the car park. So out we went again to get tested for radiation.

Going back to school in Rio was fun. My friends were giving me all sorts of ribbing and some kids refused to sit next to me for a while.

I saw this tweet a short while back. It does not add anything to the article but is an official source

https://twitter.com/SSM_Nyheter/status/1275416038755139584

Tack. Do they have a live map like Finland does [1]?

[1]. https://www.stuk.fi/aiheet/sateily-ymparistossa/sateilytilan...

Not that I am aware of. Kind of disappointed actually.

Yeah, same. I found a couple [1][2] of live maps but I'm not really sure how seriously to take them. Especially since they don't appear to show this spike.

[1]. http://radioactiveathome.org/map/

[2]. https://radmon.org/index.php

The Leningrad plant looks suspicious given the pattern in southern Finland.

And in that I case we'll never find out.

English Link

https://www.stuk.fi/web/en/topics/environmental-radiation/ra...

This is probably just leakage to due to mismanagement. Russian government may prioritize well being of population but nuclear accident would drop land price economy would suffer and people who have power would suffer from, so I hope self-interest and The lesson of all lessons make me hopeful that the rain outside my window not radioactive (in Lithuania not Russia but still in the path)

Wouldn’t be surprised if nuclear fission waste is being dumped

Hell, with all the regulatory rollbacks by the EPA [i] that might happen here soon enough.

[i] https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation...

I would be surprised if they were doing that in the Baltic Ocean. Traditionally Russia has dumped their nuclear waste near Novaya Zemlya, into the Arctic Ocean.

Has this been verified / confirmed by a second or third sensors location? Wouldn't multiple locationns help pin point the possible source?

I wonder where this is from. First thought was Fukushima. As they say it's from a civil nature. It's very far from the Baltic though. Wouldn't really be possible.

Or one of the many nuclear subs that have sank perhaps? I believe most ship reactors are quite similar in design to civil power plants, just much smaller.

Quote: "We are able to indicate the likely region of the source..."

Then tell us who. And since they didn't said it in the first place, I bet is mother Russia again.

They do indicate the region, and it does include sweden, finland, large parts of baltics and certain areas in russia: https://mobile.twitter.com/SinaZerbo/status/1276559857731153...

Had you included the full quote you would have known why they did not point out the exact location: "We are able to indicate the likely region of the source, but it’s outside the CTBTO’s mandate to identify the exact origin"

If I interpret it correctly it means that they do not know the exact location and other organisations will now have to investigate it further to get the exact origin.

The article itself lacks the region. As I don't have twitter I don't care about following links to it and furthermore, because of NoScript that I have, it didn't even appeared in the first place. In order to see the twitter link I had to temporarily allow it to see that as well.

And including the entire quote would've made no difference on the region, but the origin. I differentiate between source region (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Russia as indicated in the twitter post) and origin (a nuclear plant, a mining operation etc - that's for me meaning origin of radionuclides).

If I interpret it correctly

Sounds more like they are pretty sure where but aren't allowed to say.

Yeah that wording was strange. If they don’t know, they should just say that.

The wording seems really clear. They know, but identifying the source would be an inherently political action, and it's not part of the purpose of their organisation to take that sort of action.

I think that's the point. They are only "pretty" sure. There is always room for error, and not pointing out the likely culprit protects them from retaliation.

Or they are sure, but relations with the guilty party are not conducive to revealing it.

Can't even guess, who's riding the horse with the naked torso could be responsible.

that’s speculation. i could be a horse, it could be a bear, a moose, you name it

That's common sense. The only authoritarian state in the region refusing to share information for common security. In 2019 they already tried to hide radioactive leak on the nuclear test site [0]

After the accident, people with the radioactive syndrome were admitted to a general hospital, alongside with children and pregnant women. Doctors were threatened by FSB not to disclose information about accident. Chernobyl did not teach them anything.

[0] https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/12/security-brief-russia-w...

So they know where the emission originated from, but they are not telling it?? Please. Are we still in the 80ies?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbdAa9qXQAYji-z?format=jpg&name=...

Spoiler: 99% chance it's from Russia.

80% of that area covered is not in Russia btw.

? Nuclear accidents don't come out of thin air, they are caused by humans, some countries/areas have higher risks of accidents, and most areas have zero risk.

Russia is definitely a high risk area (if not THE high risk area), considering their soviet legacy of ancient nuclear power plants etc.

50/50 Either Tallin or St Petersburg. One of them is not in Russia, but both are Russian-style (ie Chernobyl) water pressure reactors. One of them leaked in a massive scale, but thanksfully only twice.

Despite what the article may say, I think it's premature to rule out a naval reactor.

I'd expect Estonia to have admitted it already if it was on their side.

For Russia, my expectations are completely different.

I'd expect Estonia to be very surprised and alarmed if it was on their side, given that there are no nuclear power stations or weapons in Estonia.

Estonia would have immediately shared the information about the accident with the allies. Russia always (without exceptions) tries to hide it from the world

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/12/security-brief-russia-w...

Yes, I was wrong. The 2nd nearby is Murmansk, and that's to far away for that measurements. So it's clear that it was from the stone aged St Petersburg plant, a design before Chernobyl 3+4 (which was iter 2). Their broken Unit 1 is shut down, but the old 2-4 are still online, plus 4 modern ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Or that military ship Akademik Aleksandrov which was nearby at that time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664056

Please stop spreading false information. Estonia does not have nuclear reactors and Tallinn is written with only 1 n in Russian.

I guess it's not 80's, it's a silly mistake of making an assumption that "now we are living in the different times".

The original data seems to be available at [^1] but I dont see any spike around the 22-23 of June ... Let's wait to know more before saying anything stupid (looking at you Greenpeace)

[^1] https://www.stuk.fi/aiheet/sateily-ymparistossa/sateilytilan...

That system you linked only measures radiation. While the sensor in Sweden actually sample the air to detect certain isotopes. STUK does have this type of sensors also and did see these same type of isotopes in the air[1]. [1] Announcement in Finnish https://www.stuk.fi/-/helsingin-ilmassa-pienia-maaria-keinot...

This couldn't be the leakage from that nuclear powered cruise missile 'test' lost by the Russians 2017-2018[1]? That is, is Barents sea too far from the Baltic for a couple of years of tides?

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/21/17766426/russia-nuclear-p...

The anomalous readings were airborne. Would that be possible from a missile lost at sea?

If it was transmitted through the sea, then more or less (depending on where in the Barents) the whole Norwegian coast and then some is between the Barents sea and the Baltic.

And the Norwegian coast is long. Really long.

That said this seems to be airborne.

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