Nuclear Power Truths

Nuclear / Radiation  : Clean Up Complexities

I have posted this here to give you an idea of the complexities of a Nuclear disaster clean up and what that  would entail.  In this video they  demonstrate the contamination level that  a particle smaller in size than a grain of rice. Just imagine what that  would mean in a case as complicated and volatile as Fukushima with its many reactors and the amount of spent fuel that is actually  stored there.   Not to mention the danger that  a particle that  small  would pose  to the safety and well being of  a person.  A particle of that  size could  be ingested without  detection  very  easily.

Uploaded by Carl Willison Aug 6, 2011

**Please watch in HD format for best results**

The area surrounding the incomplete natural-draft cooling towers at ChNPP’s Unit 5 construction site is littered with local hot spots that are easy to find with a scintillation detector. In this video, I dig up one of these hot spots, and learn that the object responsible for the prominent radiation is a hard black fleck a mere 0.5 mm on a side.

What is it? I collected the specimen and brought it back to the Interinform hotel for further explorations. The CDV-700 Geiger probe measures 35-40,000 cpm on contact with the beta window closed, translating into about 60 milliroentgen / hr and an activity of about 40 microcuries by comparison with other, known Cs-137 sources. Next I illustrate a rudimentary form of scintillation gamma spectrometry making use of my netbook’s sound card and a clever piece of free pulse analysis software called PRA, written by Australian physicist Marek Dolleiser. This spectrometer arrangement works on the AC-coupled linear scintillation pulses from the Ludlum 12 preamp, and displays a pulse-height spectrum that conclusively identifies the medium-lived fission product Cs-137 as the nuclide responsible for all the gamma radiation from this particle. No surprise.

About the only reasonable assumption based on the high activity (~20 mCi / g) is that this particle is a fragment of spent fuel that was ejected from Unit 4 at the time of the accident there. In color and appearance it is consistent with sintered uranium dioxide fuel, and the activity is broadly consistent as my calculation at the end of the video shows.

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