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Sunday, October 23, 2011

Fukushima Re-criticality Neutron Feast and Famine Cycle: Dancing With the Devil

As evidenced by alternating Saint Louis fallout detections of Neptunium 239 and Iodine 133 + Xenon 133, Fukushima is cycling between a free flowing neutron rich criticality creating Neptunium-239 > Plutonium 239  and a  neutron "poisoned" criticality where Iodine-133 > Xenon 133 is both the neutron poison and primary fallout product.

In essence it is a dance with the devil creating alternating fallout poisons. But as any dance with the devil, the risk is greatest when the tune changes. As ground water conditions change and the neutron poisoning influences of Xenon 133 wane, a too rapid conversion from neutron famine to neutron feast may yet lead to an explosive un-moderated re-criticality. 

Those with more precise instruments possibly understand this devil's dance in the ground water with enough quantitative clarity to more precisely ascertain  the risks and likely outcomes; but qualitatively for us,  the dance to is to see which comes first Thyroid or Lung cancer.








Update 10/28/11 with a link to the source data for the 10/17/11 detection sample.
The data is a TXT file in a CSV format.




Link to the background radiation data for the 10/17/11 detection.
The data is a TXT file in a CSV format


7 comments:

  1. I'm thinking lung will be first.
    I just love how our own government has their lips sealed on this subject. Besides what could they do for us anyway? Nothing. The gov can do nothing for us to stop radioactive fallout.
    So, why do we need them?

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  2. That's what we thought from the behaviour of reactor 1, but your analysis has clarified matters.

    Thanks.

    Condolences, also.

    Maybe, enough people asking questions of family doctors might just get somewhere. Is it worth a try? Govs. tend to sit up when enough noise is made.

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  3. This is a very strong and convincing post. Thank you for your efforts & wisdom. It leaves me speechless, too.

    Did you notice that a large CME struck the earth over the US on Sunday? What effect do you think this might have wrt spallation of radioactive contaminants in the upper atmosphere?

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  4. I was hoping you find some plausible fault to shoot it down.

    I was unaware of that CME. I did sit down at one point and try to budget out what it would take to self derive a useful model of CME interactions with high atomic weight fallout. After some pondering I came to the conclusion I would rather manage a bunch of SME's working on such a project than attempt it my self.
    If I had to do it quick and dirty I would use a probabilistic approach, but then the question becomes how to calibrate the model.

    But realistically, the best I would hope for is that just by raising the issues someone else who hopefully had access to remote sensing would pick it up and run with it. Who knows, maybe in the future, some geologist/archaeologist will stumble across the phenomenon and use it for dating purposes to this period.

    However in the short term if the data were available, I would look for a step function jump in detections across the globe that could not be readily explained by via other means.

    In the medium term, I'll use it in a novel as a way for a Bond level villain to wipe out the thyroids of every mammal on the sunlit side of the planet.

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  5. Ms. X
    I work at Oak Ridge National Lab and I have developed a 3-isotope model that may fit your data a little better than breaking it up into 3 parts and doing single isotope fits for each part. It uses the Excel "solver" tool and fits the model to the entire "unified source data". Can I prevail on you to email the Excel "unified source data" to me at eln0k0fl@knology.net so I can test my model out? If it works I would be willing to share it with you. I should be getting my Inspector unit next month and I will be setting up to get readings in Knoxville. Thanks.
    P.S. The preview is showing "o" for zeroes in eln0k0fl. If this is the case you will need to replace the o's with the number zero in both places.

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  6. Be Well,
    There are more than 3 isotopes in the data, at least 2 in the Radon daughters. But those can be modeled as a composite because of the similar half lives.

    It will be interesting to see if one can develop enough quiescence capability in Excel to perform such an analysis with this data set; the proper use of the boundary conditions may help.

    Please share any results and the source code for the model (if possible) with us. The blog post has been updated with links to down load the data.

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  7. Mrs. X
    Thank you for posting download links to your data! I see a problem with the unified source data at about the 80 minute mark when the averaging period is changed from 10 to 30 seconds. It appears that the Inspector puts a transient into the data record along with an offset. For this reason it would be better if a longer averaging time such as 30 seconds was used for the entire run. A running average can be taken, after the fact, in the spread sheet to further reduce noise if needed. I have made good progress in fitting the model but I will need another data set because of the above issues. In this regard the latest posting of unfitted cps for 10/28/11 looks much better for my purposes. Could you please post download links for that as well? Thanks in advance.

    ReplyDelete