French institute suspects nuclear accident in Russia or Kazakhstan in September

[NeoGreen]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nuclearpower-accident/french-institute-suspects-nuclear-accident-in-russia-or-kazakhstan-in-september-idUSKBN1D92LJ

French institute suspects nuclear accident in Russia or Kazakhstan in September

PARIS (Reuters) - A cloud of radioactive pollution over Europe in recent weeks indicates that an accident has happened in a nuclear facility in Russia or Kazakhstan in the last week of September, French nuclear safety institute IRSN said on Thursday.

The IRSN ruled out an accident in a nuclear reactor, saying it was likely to be in a nuclear fuel treatment site or center for radioactive medicine. There has been no impact on human health or the environment in Europe, the IRSN said.

IRSN, the technical arm of French nuclear regulator ASN, said in a statement it could not pinpoint the location of the release of radioactive material but that based on weather patterns, the most plausible zone lay south of the Ural mountains, between the Urals and the Volga river.

This could indicate Russia or possibly Kazakhstan, an IRSN official said.

“Russian authorities have said they are not aware of an accident on their territory,” IRSN director Jean-Marc Peres told Reuters. He added that the institute had not yet been in contact with Kazakh authorities.

A spokeswoman for the Russian Emergencies Ministry said she could not immediately comment. It was not immediately possible to reach authorities in Kazakhstan or the Kazakh embassy in Moscow.

Peres said that in recent weeks IRSN and several other nuclear safety institutes in Europe had measured high levels of levels of ruthenium 106, a radioactive nuclide that is the product of splitting atoms in a nuclear reactor and which does not occur naturally.

IRSN estimates that the quantity of ruthenium 106 released was major, between 100 and 300 teraBecquerels, and that if an accident of this magnitude had happened in France it would have required the evacuation or sheltering of people in a radius of a few kilometers around the accident site.

The ruthenium 106 was probably released in a nuclear fuel treatment site or center for radioactive medicine, Peres said. Because of its short half-life of about a year, ruthenium 106 is used in nuclear medicine.

Emphasis added to counteract ignorance (or is that shilling? Sometimes they get unintentionally conflated and you just can't tell).

[DetlefK]

1. As if Russia would admit to mistakes.

The russian government does not admit to mistakes as a matter of principle.

The sunk russian submarine "Kursk"? The 2002 Moscow hostage-crisis that lead to more than 100 hostages killed by police? The Beslan school-shooting? The bolshevist revolution of 1918? The famine and civil-war that followed?

Russia looks forward to the future. Putin is no friend to looking back to the past for mistakes made.

[NeoGreen]

2. No doubt, but there are some things even the Russians can't hide...

...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Russian_financial_crisis

My point is that nuclear waste is a problem that does not respect borders.

Plus, you missed a big one (Russian cover up that is)...

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=4468603

25 years after Chernobyl, how Sweden found out
Publicerat fredag 22 april 2011

"It was a Monday morning, and the alarm went."

Sweden has gotten the credit for pushing the former Soviet Union to admit that something had gone wrong at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant 25 years ago. How was it discovered? And what's left of it today, not only in the Swedish soil but also in the nation's memory?

When reactor #4 exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine on April 26, 1986, it became the most terrible nuclear accident that the world had ever known. But it was days before people knew exactly what had happened.

CHERNOBYL SETS OFF DETECTORS IN SWEDEN

"I didn't discover it. I just happened to be there," Cliff Robinson tells Radio Sweden at his home in Uppsala.

Before the world found out that a huge accident had happened at Chernobyl, Robinson knew something was wrong. He was working as a chemist at Forsmark, a nuclear power plant a couple hours north of Stockholm.

[hunter]

3. What? The previous thread got too hot for you?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127113812

[FBaggins]

4. Just to help you with the math... You know... "to counteract ignorance"

That's about one to two grams of ruthenium. Consistent with a hospital breaking the source they use for radiotherapy of eye tumors.

And again... the highest detected concentration was way below insignificant. So low that the real story is how impressive their detection equipment is.

Interesting enough to make the news... entirely irrelevant from a health perspective.

[hunter]

5. Remember the Goinia accident in Brazil?

That was 50.9 TBq, of which an estimated 44 TBq was cleaned up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

Compare and contrast.

Both accidents were unacceptable.

Non-accidental releases of fossil fuel toxins are far, far worse.

Please tell me how your anti-nuclear activism is going to save the world.

Model nations like Germany and Denmark are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. They talk a lot about the problem, they put up a lot of renewable energy window dressing, but at the end of the day they are unwilling to cut their fossil fuel use to the extent it would impact their affluent lifestyles and economic "productivity."

[NNadir]

6. The air pollution generated to run computers for scientific illiterates to report this nonsense...

Last edited Sat Nov 18, 2017, 09:45 AM - Edit history (4)

...will release many ton scale pollutants that will prove far more deadly than "terrabequerels" of ruthenium, which is a medical isotope that is used to save human lives, not that there is a single anti-nuke on this planet who gives a shit about human lives, since while they burn electricity, almost all of which comes from either coal or natural gas to demonstrate their ignorance on the internet, seven million people die each year from air pollution.

A 70 kg human being contains about 140 grams of potassium. Since all of the potassium on earth contains the radioisotope potassium 40 which is present as a percentage, 0.00117%. The specific activity of K-40 is 259.1 kilobequerels per gram. For someone who can do math - the number of paranoid anti-nukes who can is in my experience, zero - this means that a 70 kg human being contains 4250 bequerels of potassium.

There are seven billion people on this planet, almost all of whom, in my opinion, lead more useful lives than your average obsessive anti-nuke.

If one can do math, one can therefore calculate, based on the world population. that human beings contain about 3 terabequerels of potassium.

Now, of course, the anti-nuke fantasy is that every little bequerel is going to tunnel into their tiny little brains and cause a big brain tumor. This is simply not true, since ruthenium is only volatile as its tetraoxide, which is generally a powerful oxidant and therefore unstable in air. To the extent it is present in air, it must therefore be carried on wind blown dust. Most of it will probably blow around the world carried on the air pollutants about which dumb anti-nukes couldn't care less.

To the extent that any portion of this dust falls in the sea, it will be dwarfed by the radioactivity of the ocean owing to potassium, since the ocean contains about 530 billion curies of radioactive potassium 40. In Bequerels, this amounts to about 2 with 22 zeros after it.

How Radioactive Is the Ocean.

In any case, it is a noble metal which is extremely difficult to solubilize. When used to treat eye cancer, it is therefore applied topically, often in home settings.

Here is the commercial product for the application of ruthenium-106 to the eye: Ru-106 Eye Applicators

Here is the text from the add for ruthenium-106 eye applicators, provided by the Eckert and Zeigler company whose motto is "Contributing to Saving Lives:"

First Choice Treatment

For most ophthalmic oncologists, first-line treatment is plaque radiotherapy whenever applicable, as this is technically straightforward and very effective. When choosing a Ru-106 Eye Applicator, it requires no assembly and just needs to be sterilized before use. Due to the long half-life of 373.6 days, Ru-106 Eye Applicators can be used multiple times over a one-year period.

Ergonomic Design

For more than 30 years, ophthalmologists have favored Ru-106 Eye Applicators due to their superior design. With a thickness of only 1 mm, they are very easy to handle. The applicators are available in 16 different types to provide a match to the individual tumor size and location. They are spherically shaped with a radius of 12 to 14 mm and have special eyelets that are sutured to the sclera.

Beneficial Beta Radiation
As the beta radiation emitted by Ru-106/Rh-106 has a limited range, there is an advantageous steep dose fall-off. As a result, tumors with a height of up to 5 mm can be treated with a high dose, while sparing sensitive structures like the optic disc or fovea.

Quality of Life

The conservation of central vision is the primary goal of Ru-106 Eye Applicator brachytherapy. If this is not possible, the treatment will aim to conserve peripheral vision or at least maintain the physical appearance of the eye, depending on the location of the tumor.

Now, we know that anti-nukes - many of whom belong to the ignorance society known as Greenpeace - don't give a shit about vision of any kind. A worse example of their contempt for eyes is their opposition to Golden Rice to prevent vitamin A deficiency in poor people, poor people being another portion of humanity about whom the bourgeois brats couldn't care less.

Eye cancer is comparatively rare compared to blindness from vitamin A deficiency, but nonetheless, if I had it, I'd be absolutely outraged that stupid fucks around the world are carrying on about ruthenium-106 which has surely saved more human lives than this ersatz "tragedy" will injure.

The paranoia and stupidity of anti-nukes is disgusting, absolutely disgusting. Their ignorance kills people, not because they are working to prevent the treatment of eye cancer, which doesn't kill all that many people, but because their ignorance is the chief cause behind the fact that 36 billion tons of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide is dumped routinely into the planetary atmosphere every fucking year, along with myriad potent carcinogens and particulates that kill people continuously without fucking stop.

Have a nice weekend.