Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jostmey 2954 days ago
Last October a mysterious radioactive cloud spread over Europe [1,2]. The source was traced to the Ural mountains between Russia and Kazakhstan. Although the amount of radioactive fallout in Europe was minuscule and harmless, there must have been a significant amount of radioactive material released at the source.

A few months ago, Putin announced Russia developed a nuclear powered missile with unlimited range [3] (really is was just 22 miles because "Russia"). The missile was reportedly tested in late 2017. Did Russia spew radioactive jet waste over their country during a field test of their nuclear powered missile?

News Sources:

1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/10/563286253...

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/11/21...

3. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/01/590014611/...

2 comments

A more likely explanation: "The French IRSN has put forth the hypothesis in Jan-2018 that a possible reason for the release of Ru-106 radioactivity at Mayak-PA might be an unsuccessful attempt to extract the short-lived reactor-generated-isotope cerium-144 for the European/Italian nuetrino-detecton-project Borexino. Mayak-PA had agreed to deliver cerium-144 in early 2018, but canceled the contract in December 2017. Mayak PA was the only facility contractually-willing to attempt the extraction of cerium-144 from "fresh" spent nuclear fuel, 2–3 years old." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_radioactivity_increas...

Doesn't really sound plausible to me that a nuclear powered missile engine would, as far as I know, release a single radioactive isotope, Ruthenium 106 in this case, with its exhaust or upon a crash.