
Radioactive ruthenium from an undeclared major nuclear release in 2017 - haunter
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/07/25/1907571116
======
noirchen
A few years ago a professor from the Miami University in Ohio came to our
institution to give a talk about her students accidentally found high levels
of radiation in a valley nearby. After some investigation they tracked down
the source of radiation to a factory that prepared nuclear raw materials
during the cold war. Some of the radiating dusts got carried by the wind and
affected a region of tens of miles down in the valley. Apparently the locals
in the valley town are not informed and the cancer rate is relatively high in
the town. For some reason their papers on this are rejected, and calls for a
public investigation were buried. I am not sure what the situation is now, but
it would not be too difficult to contact some faculties of environmental
sciences in that university if anyone is interested.

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

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

~~~
qball
>I wonder if they ever factor in societial factors like these.

Radioactive releases like this are endemic to every coal-burning power
station, which while a problem for public health certainly isn't publicized
like this is.

Remember, carbon emissions will also destroy the planet if the current
projections are anything to go by; I think the chance (certainly less likely
with modern reactor designs) that a few local areas are rendered uninhabitable
is a tradeoff society will need to be willing to make when the alternative is
that _the entire planet_ be rendered uninhabitable over a significantly longer
timeframe.

Any other answer just isn't taking climate change seriously enough. Reactors
are ready (with the proper funding) for construction today; solar/wind designs
capable of supplying the quantity of baseload power nuclear can do not
currently exist and neither does power storage- and they aren't nearly as
scalable as building another reactor is (mainly due to land and raw materials
usage) when power demands jump because everyone needs an air conditioning to
survive the summer and a local desalinization plant (or water pipeline)
because the rivers and aquifers no longer provide enough water. Additionally,
if an energy-intensive carbon capture technology becomes available, the only
energy source capable of powering such a device at the scale required is
nuclear.

We've already offloaded our waste onto future generations. Might as well use
the most effective technology we know how to create to stem the bleeding a
bit.

~~~
ben_w
I’m in favour of nuclear, but what you say of renewables is only half right.
PV is currently around 0.5 terawatts and 2018’s _relatively slow_ growth was
27%, and at these rates it is likely to solve most of our problems before any
nuclear plant not yet commissioned gets finished.

As for land usage, if the USA did this it would be smaller than the road
network, rising to “about the same” if you want to replace all ICE cars with
battery cars.

CO2 capture, and desalination, don’t need to be run 24 hours per day, so
there’s no reason to care if they don’t have energy storage to run at night.
Likewise, AC is most important when, and just after, the sun is shining, so
the storage need is low.

Storage does have a long way to go before we’re out of trouble, but even if I
wasn’t fairly optimistic about it, PV knocks out the worst carbon sources
first, giving us more time to build — for example — your preferred nuclear
reactors.

~~~
Retric
Reverse osmosis desalination needs to operate 24/7 as the capital costs are
extreme.

Storage backed solar power is significantly lower than nuclear across most of
the world. Further as a base load production Nuclear can’t cheaply follow
demand which makes it a poor fit in a world with occasionally negative
wholesale prices. That is what is stopping significantly increased Nuclear
adoption.

~~~
baq
Please don’t confuse finance and physics. Taxes and incentives can change
financials overnight.

~~~
Retric
It’s cheaper for a reverse osmosis plant to buy batteries to operate at night
than shut down 1/2 the tome. Stupid incentives can change what people do, but
the economy pays for the inefficiency.

~~~
baq
It all depends on what you don't count as costs. When you take environmental
impact of running a desalination plant off non-renewables, it might be more
efficient to not run it at night if the wind isn't blowing. Thinking in terms
of current prices doesn't make sense in the environment context.

(I agree that a lot of batteries may be a very good solution.)

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

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

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

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

~~~
philpem
I don't see why this has been downvoted so far. Inconvenient truth?

People hate whistleblowers. "Shoot the messenger. It's the easiest solution."

~~~
ggm
HN won't let you downvote comments on your own posts so I assure you, I didn't
and do not think this comment was downvote-worthy. I might not agree, but it's
a valid, if cynical point.

I just think that at a level where a peer review paper says "you did this"
failure to respond is a fail in two dimensions: Its asocial and fundamentally
stupid politically despite the "deny everything" posture every government
takes, and its un-scientific: It makes it harder for other people to take your
own science seriously, if you refuse to participate full-cycle in the process.

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

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

This report seems to strongly point against that theory.

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

~~~
SiempreViernes
Their nuclear rocket is a development effort, not an operational weapon, and
they haven’t claimed to have achieved the central technical goal of making a
reactor small enough to put in a missile.

~~~
thunderbird120
It's certainly a work in progress but it seems that they have been testing at
least marginally functional versions of the missile complete with nuclear
powered propulsion[1].

[1][https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18948/u-s-has-been-
sec...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18948/u-s-has-been-secretly-
watching-russias-nuclear-powered-cruise-missiles-crash-and-burn)

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

[https://www.epa.gov/radnet](https://www.epa.gov/radnet)

Hope you never need that information.

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

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

~~~
simion314
Nuclear energy is not a free but it kills a lot less the coal, so closing
nuclear plants and using coal plants like Germany did is stupid(the decision
was pure political and forced by the Green party, ironic)

~~~
PeterStuer
Acutally, On 26 January 2019, a group of federal and state leaders as well as
industry representatives, environmentalists, and scientists made an agreement
to close all 84 coal plants in the country by 2038.

It is especially Solar and Wind that are on the rise in Germany

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany)

~~~
scythe
Germany has always had a good environmental track record, which is why their
bad decisions are interesting. It tells us about communication problems
between researchers who study the impacts of energy generation and voters who
are concerned about protecting the environment.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And politicians who were happy to simply outsource CO₂ emissions by closing
their nuclear plants and buying electricity from other countries, which
generate it from coal.

~~~
jacobush
Yep - it's not in their electoral backyard. Another angle is that it seems
Germany is becoming a giant in renewable tech. I mean, it looks like their big
bet on that is paying off in pure economical terms. So the voters are unlikely
to punish politicians for a move that seems to spell a lot of export money for
Germany.

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

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

