I-131 can be only a consequence of recent nuclear reaction taking place. Sudden criticality and explosion of an old submaride won't produce enough of that - while will release whole lot of other isotopes, so no one would mention iodine. It can be little but a reactor meltdown or a nuclear explosion (while that must have seismic signature hard to not mention)
Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
211–220 of 258 posts
Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
#212Could be a satellite reentry. It's not unprecedented.
In 1978, Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 crashed into the atmosphere and spread 50kg's of Uranium across western Canada. They only recovered 1% of the fuel. One of the pieces recovered was radioactive enough to kill a person in a few hours.
Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kind of off topic, but mind sharing how you molded such an amateur nuclear physics brain?
I suspect he was being sarcastic. The fact that a 90 amu atom doesn't yield 131 amu atoms when it decays doesn't require you to know about anything beyond conservation of mass.
There are plenty of people whose nuclear physics isn't even up to that, so i think it was a reasonable question, even if the answer is "i paid attention in physics at high school and remembered it"!
Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lawyers don't decline to give legal advice for free just because they want paying, although they do, and fair enough. Law is a highly complex and recondite field, and a solid answer on any but the most trivial question requires nontrivial research to identify with confidence. Lawyers also have a professional guild to which to answer, and if they say something offhand which turns out to be erroneous in a way that brin…
'A highly complex and recondite field, and a solid answer on any but the most trivial question requires nontrivial research to identify with confidence.' So very much like the problem identified here then? I agree with your sentiment though.
No, the problem identified here is utterly trivial by comparison.
Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
#215The quoted levels are unimaginably small! Almost invisible. I wonder how they manage to detect them. Just calculated that if whole of the Earth's atmosphere was filled with I-131 with maximum reported concentration (0.5E-6bq/m3), it would be an amount of iodine that is produced with a nuclear explosion of 0.00024kt, i.e. 240kg TNT equivalent. That is so small that it hardly qualifies as a nuclear explosion - more like 'critical assembly accident'.
And YES, this could be explained by a disposed nuclear reactor of an old submarine suddenly going prompt critical and blowing up! In the split second when it explodes it could release that and even much larger amount of iodine. I just couldn't imagine that levels so low are detectable.
It could be also an explosion on non-disposed, fresh nuclear reactor. That can explain lack of other detectable isotopes. And that is an event too small to produce a detectable seismic signature.
Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
#216Could be a satellite reentry. It's not unprecedented. In 1978, Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 crashed into the atmosphere and spread 50kg's of Uranium across western Canada. They only recovered 1% of the fuel. One of the pieces recovered was radioactive enough to kill a person in a few hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954
Comment made in other threads is that this particular isotope of iodine is very short-lived (8 days) and a known product of uranium and plutonium fission. So, its source is assumed to be recent fission event, or medical radiotherapy generation. Any unrecovered material from defunct satellites probably no longer undergoing active fission.
Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would posit that you haven't looked very hard... http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/206
The issue (in the US) is how many people read those Pulitzer winning stories vs. watched Fox News and other sources that are driven by the Murdoch/Ailes/Koch agenda. Sadly, a lot of people in the US watch Fox News and think it is the only truth. (Check out mediamatters.org for some agenda monitoring).
> driven by the Murdoch/Ailes/Koch agenda.
David Koch opposes the Iraq War.
Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A good mirrorless could take most of these shots as well, though I suspect by the time you installed a lens long enough for the wildlife shots[1], it wouldn't be much lighter than the DSLR. That's one of the big advantages of Micro Four-Thirds - if you're willing to sacrifice a bit of sensor area, you get very bright and lightweight telephoto lenses.
While the lens would be lighter than a DSLR equivalent, I still can't bring myself to buy one for my Olympus set-up. The reason I sold my Canon gear and went MFT was the size - it's almost pocketable and easily fits in a small backpack when travelling. Adding even a moderate telephoto ruins it for me.
The focal ranges are more intended for APS-C, but do check out the Sigma 19/2.8 and 30/2.8 lenses. They are not quite a pancake lens, but they are pretty close.
Are you OK with manual glass? If so, check out the Samyang 135mm f/2. If that's still too big, the Pentax 135mm f/2.5 or Nikkor 105/2.5 are both quite compact (roughly the size of a can of soda) and will provide you with a little more reach. None of those is a native M4/3 lens, so you will need to buy them in a Nikon or Pentax mount and use an adapter.
Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow! A whole new low. I never thought I would see it get worse but here it is. Please tell me we are better than this as a profession.
I'm not sure what here gives you cause for such a cri de coeur . It would certainly dismay me to see these attitudes taken by an educator. For a working professional with deadlines to meet, they are entirely reasonable, albeit perhaps a bit harsh. But the world can be a bit harsh, too.
> It would certainly dismay me to see these attitudes taken by an educator.
What, to you, is the purpose of a university entrance examination?
Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
#220On the general subject of the Arctic, I would recommend the book Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez.