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Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - vital1 - 07-29-2019


29th July 2019 - Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia


The source of a gigantic, mysterious leak of radioactive material that swept across Europe in 2017 has been traced to a Russian nuclear facility, which appears to have been preparing materials for experiments in Italy.

The leak released up to 100 times the amount of radiation into the atmosphere that the Fukushima disaster did. Italian scientists were the first to raise the alarm on 2 October, when they noticed a burst of the radioactive ruthenium-106 in the atmosphere. This was quickly corroborated by other monitoring laboratories across Europe.

RE: Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - Code - 07-30-2019

what does this mean?
"The leak released up to 100 times the amount of radiation into the atmosphere that the Fukushima disaster did."
Are they talking about just the ruthenium?  Or just the amount of fallout from Fukushima that made it to Europe?

A paper here

Airborne concentrations and chemical considerations of radioactive ruthenium from an undeclared major nuclear release in 2017

MVB shows that monitoring stations apparently stop reporting when larger amounts of fallout are detected.

Today most of these European networks are connected to each other via the informal “Ring of Five” (Ro5) platform for the purpose of rapid exchange of  information on airborne radionuclides detected at trace levels. The Ro5 was founded in the mid-1980s by 5 member countries: Sweden, Federal Republic of Germany, Finland, Norway, and Denmark. Today, the memberships have grown to laboratories in 22 countries 

RE: Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - HHD - 07-30-2019

(Pnas link) July 26, 2019
...A massive atmospheric release of radioactive 106Ru occurred in Eurasia in 2017, which must have been caused by a sizeable, yet undeclared nuclear accident. This work presents the most compelling monitoring dataset of this release, comprising 1,100 atmospheric and 200 deposition data points from the Eurasian region. The data suggest a release from a nuclear reprocessing facility located in the Southern Urals, possibly from the Mayak nuclear complex. A release from a crashed satellite as well as a release on Romanian territory (despite high activity concentrations) can be excluded. The model age of the radioruthenium supports the hypothesis that fuel was reprocessed ≤2 years after discharge, possibly for the production of a high-specific activity 144Ce source for a neutrino experiment in Italy...

There have been speculations in a Science commentary (35) that the release of 106Ru may have been associated with the production of a powerful cerium-144 (144Ce; T1/2 = 285 d) source at Mayak for a neutrino experiment in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Italy). The experiment is set up around the liquid scintillator “Borexino” (Italian diminutive of BOREX, Boron Solar Neutrino Experiment). In an experiment called Short Baseline Neutrino Oscillations with Borexino (SOX-Borexino), the existence of a hypothetical fourth (sterile) should be tested by positioning a powerful, yet compact 144Ce-144Pr source in the vicinity of the Borexino detector to induce nuclear reactions of the inverse β-decay type (36). According to Vivier et al. (37), the Mayak reprocessing facility has been identified as the only potential supplier to have the chemical capabilities to produce a 144Ce antineutrino source with sufficient activity (approximately 3.5 to 5 PBq 144Ce) and purity (38, 39). In this facility, sources are produced using fission product solutions from spent fuel reprocessing. Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from VVER-440 reactors for the purpose of production of petabecquerel sources of 144Ce for sterile neutrino experiments is discussed in Gerasimov et al. (40). The authors suggest reprocessing spent fuel with a cooling period of 3 y after irradiation. Apparently, “fresher” fuel with less cooling is not being considered, as the extremely high activity levels in such fuel may cause problems in the reprocessing and handling. For example, western reprocessing facilities, such as La Hague (France), do not consider reprocessing of spent fuel until at least 4 (or even 10) y after irradiation (34, 41). However, shorter irradiation duration of the nuclear fuel (1 or 2 y instead of 3 y) is being discussed as a potential way to yield higher specific activities of 144Ce in the entire (mainly stable) fission-derived cerium fraction. Indeed, the onset of stable Ce in the fuel becomes a crucial factor for the production of such source. While the activity of 3.5 to 5 PBq 144Ce corresponds to 30 to 43 g of this radionuclide only, this amount makes up less than 1% of the total mass of Ce that is being isolated from the spent fuel (40). The SOX experiment required a source of ideally at least 3.7 PBq 144Ce with a total mass of 2.5 kg of ultrapure Ce (including both stable and radioactive nuclides) (42), which is challenging to produce. Previously, other radionuclides (including 106Ru) were considered for the SOX-Borexino experiment (36), but 144Ce was found to be easier to extract from spent nuclear fuel. Spent nuclear fuel reprocessing is usually based on the PUREX method (Plutonium Uranium Recovery by Extraction), in which the UO2 fuel is chopped into smaller fragments and dissolved in 7 to 7.5 M HNO3. Most fission products (including Ce) are dissolved in the aqueous raffinate; however, a part of the Ru is oxidized to highly volatile RuO4 and found in the off-gas, where it has to be captured and treated. Fuel components (U and Pu) are recovered by extraction into a kerosene/trin-butyl phosphate phase before they are further processed and recycled. For the isolation of the cerium fraction in the aqueous phase, complexing displacement chromatography techniques were identified, which would yield a cerium fraction with sufficient purity, which would then be converted to CeO2 and sintered (43). The final product should have fit into a capsule of <15 cm diameter, compact enough to be considered as a point-like source (43).

A critical factor of the attempted 144Ce source is its required extraordinarily high specific activity. While the specific activity of 144Ce per gram of fission-derived Ce can be increased by 28%, when the VVER-440 fuel is irradiated for 2 y instead of 3 y (and by 76% when irradiated for 1 instead of 3 y) (40), the reduction of the cooling time from 3 to 2 y causes a gain in specific activity by more than 140% (based on data from ref. 34). In fact, the aspired specific activity of at least 3.7 PBq of 144Ce in 2.5 kg of ultrapure Ce can hardly be achieved only by reducing the irradiation duration of the fuel (in theory, this goal is only barely reachable when using 1-y-irradiated fuel), but can easily be achieved by reducing the cooling period from 3 y down to ∼2 y (even for 5 PBq sources and even from regular spent fuel at the end of its fuel lifetime). The reduction of the cooling period of the spent fuel may have been regarded as the only feasible way to yield a sufficient activity of 144Ce in a yet reasonably small-sized source volume that was needed for the SOX experiments. If the 106Ru release was indeed linked to the production of the SOX source, these considerations concerning the specific activity of the 144Ce source would explain the young age of the Ru fission products at the time of the release. According to the source term estimates, the estimated release of 250 TBq of 106Ru would correspond to an accidental loss of about 7 to 10% of the 106Ru contained in the amount of VVER-440 fuel (700 to 1,000 kg, corresponding to 2 fuel assemblies) that would be necessary for the production of a 3.5 to 5 PBq 144Ce source (assuming regular spent VVER-440 fuel at the end of its lifetime, based on data from ref. 34 and 2 y of cooling). In any case, the unusually young age of the 103,106Ru of about 2 y after the end of irradiation in a power reactor would match the hypothesis of a release of 106Ru during the production of the 144Ce SOX source. Regarding this production, the fact that the order of the 144Ce source was canceled by the Mayak facility shortly after the 103,106Ru release attracted the attention of the nuclear community and initiated speculations whether both events (the release of 103,106Ru and the cancelation of the 144Ce order) may be linked (35). No finding of our research refuted or disproved the hypothesis of a linkage between the radioruthenium detection episode and the production of a 144Ce source.

If the radioruthenium came from the production of the 144Ce source, and if spent fuel has been reprocessed before reaching the end of its fuel lifetime in reactor, the above age estimate would represent a slight underestimate, as the “youth-indicator” 103Ru would be present in “fresher” fuel in disproportionally higher concentrations compared with 106Ru. The nonetheless young age of the 103,106Ru also speaks against the “satellite hypothesis” as such young radionuclide batteries would not typically be available, because of a lack of facilities that can routinely handle such young fuel (possibly with the exception of the Mayak industrial complex).

RE: Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - vital1 - 07-30-2019


What does this mean?


I agree, the article is very vague on detail.

Are they referencing only the release of ruthenium from both events, or do they mean the total radiation releases?

The main stream media are using every article they write to play down the significance of the ongoing Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe.

Here is an recent example on the ABC Australian web site .

28th July 2019 - Queensland's Smile With Kids helping Fukushima children to rebuild their lives


The Fukushima Health Management Survey found rates of psychological distress was far greater in Fukushima compared with other areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami that caused the Daiichi power plant meltdown.

It also found an increased prevalence of lifestyle-related diseases like obesity and hypertension after the disaster.

The emphasis of this article is that it is mainly  stress and lifestyle that is creating the majority of the health problems, not the radiation contamination.

There is no mention of the actual documented deaths and fatalities caused by the massive environmental radiation contamination!

RE: Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - DUDe - 07-31-2019

The False Promise of Nuclear Power
We must free ourselves from the false hope that a technology designed for ultimate destruction could be transmogrified into ultimate life-enhancement

RE: Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - vital1 - 07-31-2019

We repeatedly see governments around the world, that have a vested interest in nuclear power, do anything they can to cover up, or play down the seriousness of any nuclear accident. Even if the cover up leads to the death of large numbers of men, women and children, they will still do everything they can to obstigate the truth.

They support this industry even though it makes no economical sense to keep this sick industry going.

The only reason anyone makes a profit is because the governments massively financially subsidize the industry, and socialize the risk.

This means, when a major accident occurs, the public picks up the costs, and the industry is provided a bailout through the public purse.

RE: Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - Code - 08-01-2019

All governments lie.

Strange that people support and praise their governments and rulers.  The authoritarian submissive embrace is a global sickness of our species.

Does anyone consider that the governments are largely responsible for keeping war machines and destructive corporate businesses in place and that reigning in their reckless activity by defunding them is paramount to survival?   If the anti nuclearists ever succeed in limiting nuclear, we still will have lost the silent war of profiteering being waged against the people and the ecosphere.

- Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet diplomat --   "Governments are never sincere."

Arnie weighs in...
Nuclear Spring; a legacy of lies

lying about nuclear weapons has not been limited to Japanese officials.  The French government argued for years that it was developing nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes -- until it abruptly moved forward with its nuclear weapons program.  The Indian government denied that it had conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1974, when it set off a "Peaceful Nuclear Explosion."  Meanwhile, the Soviet government, while posing for decades as a fierce foe of nuclear weapons, developed the world's largest nuclear arsenal.  As for the U.S. government, it lied for years about the dangers of nuclear testing, downplayed the ability to detect nuclear testing and development abroad, and made nuclear disarmament offers based on their propaganda value.  One of the more interesting nuclear gambits has been pursued by the Israeli government, which has never admitted that it possesses nuclear weapons -- although that government had Mordechai Vanunu kidnapped, tried, and locked in prison for eighteen years (eleven of them in solitary confinement) for the "crime" of publicly revealing their existence.

"People near Denver, Colorado, believed the official line that the factory with the bright lights up on the hill called Rocky Flats was making household chemicals rather than plutonium “pits” for bombs. And certainly nobody told them that they had been showered with the radioactive metal after a fire there."

war is a lie

whats behind restoration of the cold war

Historical Review of “False Flag Terror”


Albert Einstein

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

George Bernard Shaw

RE: Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - Code - 08-03-2019

In support of the idea that the media is intentionally or unintentionally reducing the seriousness of Fukushima....(what to say of all nuclear activities),  the statement that the mysterious 2017 radiation release was  100 times greater than Fukushima and totally safe is just false.   Fukushima released little ruthenium.  The damage to the ecosphere from Fukushima is intense with documented decrease in animal numbers, and increased deformity.   

The equating of ruthenium measurements in Europe to the total radiation release in Fukushima is very bad journalism.  On top of that, there is evidence of other radionuclides besides ruthenium which are ignored by the media.  In short, we dont know the true nature of the Russian nuclear accident.

Very low levels of semi- and low volatile elements were released. In particular, low-volatile gamma emitting fission products, including isotopes of ruthenium,

"We measured radioactive ruthenium-106," says Georg Steinhauser. "The measurements indicate the largest singular release of radioactivity from a civilian reprocessing plant." In autumn of 2017, a cloud of ruthenium-106 was measured in many European countries, with maximum values of 176 millibecquerels per cubic meter of air. The values were up to 100 times higher than the total concentrations measured in Europe after the Fukushima incident.

RE: Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - Code - 08-14-2019

from MVB at Allegedly Apparent

Hey!? Pssst! Did you know all those articles about the 2017 Ru-106 cloud are nuke cartel diversion stories to hide [omitted]… ?

I-131 and Cs-137 spiked in Estonia to levels only seen after a massive reactor meltdown

I like this 10 hour long air raid siren
Play it all day as a testament to our leaders pro-active wealth extraction activities, ...or simply as a meditation aid

RE: Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia - Horse - 12-23-2019

Russia appears to have kept a major nuclear accident secret. But scientists called the 'Ring of 5' tracked the plume of radiation to its source.
Aria Bendix
Business Insider
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 04:28 UTC
Quote:The new study suggests that the Mayak facility likely released 250 terabecquerels (a measurement of radioactivity) of ruthenium into the atmosphere. The Kyshtym explosion, by comparison, released about 2,700 terabecquerels of ruthenium. The  world’s worst nuclear accident, Chernobyl, released about 5.3 million terabecquerels of radioactive material,  a 2013 analysis found.

The scientists don’t consider the levels of radiation they detected to be an immediate threat to people’s health. Last year, France’s Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety determined that the levels of ruthenium-106 in the atmosphere  did not pose a danger to human health or the environment. But the long-term consequences are unknown.

Old news, with the usual declarations of no immediate threat and no danger, but I thought it interesting that the author included the statement that the long-term consequences are unknown.  Its not unknown, more accurately the long-term consequences aren't admitted.  Every radiation dose cumulatively adds to the risk of developing a cancer.  Its nice to get confirmation that anything happened at all, the 2017 release wasn't in the news much at the time.  It's an example of how media treats nuclear incidents since Fukushima Daiichi melted out and shook the world.