Neutron Beam Observed 13 Times (At Fukushima)

[tekisui]

Source: Japan Times

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

Tepco said the neutron beam measured about 1.5 km southwest of the plant's Nos. 1 and 2 reactors over three days from March 13 and is equivalent to 0.01 to 0.02 microsieverts per hour. This is not a dangerous level of radiation, it added.

The utility said it will also measure uranium and plutonium, which could emit a neutron beam.

(snip)

But the measured neutron beam may be evidence that uranium and plutonium leaked from the plant's nuclear reactors and spent nuclear fuel have discharged a small amount of neutron beams via fission.

more: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110324a6.html

[truebrit71]

1. Pardon my ignorance but what does that mean?

...

[Taverner]

2. Yes, I'd like to know too

[whoneedstickets]

4. The next step is photon torpedoes, take cover.

I really don't know and make light of it due to ignorance.

[Captain Lee]

7. What is a neutron beam

It means core breach.

Neutrons are the by-product of a fission reaction, which continue the reaction.

A neutron beam means that there's a hole in the containment vessel and fission is still occuring in the reactor. Picture the containment vessel as a ballon, trapping air. Put a small hole in the side and the air jets out. Neutrons are ejected 360 degrees from a reaction, but if there's a hole, then those neutrons aligned with the hole will jet out as a stream.

[whoneedstickets]

9. Dang! Hope it's aimed at Dick Cheney's house.

Could we manage a little deflection with mirrors?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

19. If your mirror is made of beryllium you could.

[Jamastiene]

25. That's the same stuff used in heat sink compound under computer processors.

Quick everybody. Turn off your computers, put the anti-static straps on your wrists, and say, "PENTIUM POWER!!!" while we all aim the beam to Darth Cheney.

[DainBramaged]

29. UH, no, thermal grease isn't pure t it's beryllium oxide

along with silver oxide, aluminum nitride, aluminum oxide, zinc oxide and silicon dioxide goes under CPUs nowadays.


Beryllium is a highly toxic metal and if exposed to it, at or above the threshold values, it can lead to a chronic beryllium disease (CBD) (i.e. berylliosis) or an acute beryllium disease. Toxic exposure to beryllium is most often thru an inhalation pathway. Beryllium has a variety of effects. Some beryllium combines with a protein and is deposited in the liver, spleen and kidneys, but the beryllium when bound with a biological protein, a hapten, can result in the chronic form of the disease which is believed to be a delayed hypersensitivity immune response. The major toxicological effects of beryllium are on the respiratory tract,specifically the lungs and their alveoli.

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jaeger/beryllium.htm

[Shagbark Hickory]

3. Is that by any chance the power plant that Homer Simpson works at?

[FirstLight]

5. oh shit

now the aliens that have been hanging out waiting to see what we doo with our planet are gonna think it's a beacon, signaling the mothership!
:hide:

really, this cannot be good, can it?

[Poll_Blind]

10. No, this could be great news. Doesn't Galactic Command have a "You land on it, you FIX IT." rule?

We could all use some altruistic aliens right about now.

PB

[Baclava]

13. maybe they'll signal back

[guitar man]

20. That's not the mother ship

THIS is the mothership! ;)

[me b zola]

30. We've got the funk

...just not the groovy kind that Parliament sang about. We have funked our oceans, our drinking water, our air & atmosphere.

I prefer Parliament's kind of funk.

[JuniperLea]

27. It's great news!

Those guys are far more advanced and way smarter than we are... they will see it as a distress signal and come rescue us from ourselves! Yay!

Strange shapes light up the night
I've never seen 'em though I hope I might
Don't ask if they are real
The men in black, their lips are sealed

Fantasy fills my mind
To leave this place before my time
Release myself from earthly care
My dream may be your nightmare

Chorus:I turn my hopes up to the sky
I'd like to know before I die
Memories will slowly fade
I lift my eyes and say
Come on take me away
Come on take me away

Come here girl close to me
A thousand stars your eyes can see
First one we see tonight
I wish I may I wish I might

Chorus:
Jam
Chorus:
I lift my eyes and say
Come on take me away

Take Me Away was written by E. Bloom and A. Nova, and was recorded by the Blue Oyster Cult!

[MineralMan]

6. It's a mistranslation. We went over that yesterday.

No neutron beam. Just neutron radiation. Someone mistranslated a Japanese word. Happens a lot.

[Edweird]

11. Mistranslation or not, neutron radiation is an indicator of fission. That is not good.

You're splitting hairs while ignoring the elephant in the room.

[MineralMan]

15. No, I'm not splitting hairs.

There is such a thing as a neutron beam. No such thing is coming from Fukushima. I'm just opting for accuracy. And yes, neutron radiation is a fission product. I knew that, actually.

[Edweird]

17. Sorry, I should have used the word 'minimizing'. "Just neutron radiation."

"Just neutron radiation." Seriously? "Just neutron radiation." is evidence that the worst case scenario is likely occurring.

[MineralMan]

18. It's evidence of something. That's for sure.

A neutron beam, though, cannot be generated by the reactor. A neutron beam is a concentrated beam of neutrons. Generators are available for neutron beams, which are used to take something like an x-ray of materials that cannot be penetrated by x-rays.

Some isotopes, like Californium-252 spontaneously emit neutrons, and they're part of cosmic radiation. However the neutron emissions from Fukushima are no doubt connected to the reactors. The levels measured were very low, however. We do not know what they mean at this time.

Right now, they don't represent a serious risk. However it will be important to know their source, and I'm sure that's being investigated.

Accuracy in these reports is important.

[bananas]

26. "A neutron beam is a concentrated beam of neutrons" - wrong.

A beam just means they are going in the same direction, it has nothing to do with how "concentrated" they are.
Accuracy in these reports is important - and you have been very inaccurate.

[girl gone mad]

34. Correct, bananas.

It's just a collimated stream of particles. Intensity, velocity, energy, etc. can vary.

[bananas]

24. Exactly where did you go over this yesterday?

[MineralMan]

28. Turns out it was two days ago, here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=723425

It wasn't me who discovered the incorrect translation, though. I did suggest that possibility, but someone who knows Japanese clarified the actual meaning.

Thanks for asking.

[bananas]

31. Thanks. nt

[Raschel]

8. Damn. Those assholes. They said there "may be" a core breach, this is their way of admitting it.

[Yo_Mama]

12. Neutrons are created by fission

They can also be created by certain types of radioactive decay.

They are definitely not something you would normally see on the earth's surface!!

The beam TEPCO found was a very low-intensity beam over 3 days starting on March 13th. In other words, this is old news.

[Raschel]

16. Old news that they didn't mention until today. And why in the hell are they just now saying

they will measure uranium and plutonium? I think we all know the answer to that.

I'm getting used to their communication style.

[MineralMan]

22. Well, one thing you can be sure of: Those neutron "beams" are

not going to reach you. Neutrons tend to impact other atoms very quickly, even in the atmosphere. So, you'll be safe from them.

[girl gone mad]

35. Free neutrons decay within minutes.

It's an unstable particle outside of the nucleus. Free neutrons emit a W- particle (boson) which then produces an electron and an antineutrino. In the process one of its down quarks becomes an up quark (less mass), so now its a proton.

ETA: Here's the Feynman diagram:

[Raschel]

36. I wasn't worried about the beams reaching me. To tell you the truth, I am getting very frustrated

with the information on this whole thing!

[Marblehead]

14. could be the

spent fuel rods are melting down

[MineralMan]

21. Yes, it could be. Or, it could be that there is a small opening in

the containment vessel of one of the reactors. We don't know what the source is. Neither do they know in Japan. Yet. They will.

It's certainly not a good sign. But there are few good signs when several reactors are screwed up, as at Fukushima. It's a very bad situation, but each piece of news is a piece of the puzzle. Before things can be brought under control, they need to know where the problem is. Then, they can address it. I doubt they're not trying to figure this out. They want to know as badly as you do, I'm very sure.

Nuclear power generation is not safe. It never has been, and never can be made to be safe. It exists, however, in spite of that, so incidents happen. This one has happened. They're trying to get it under control.

[BeFree]

32. Lets hope it is just the Core Vessel.

And not the waste fuel lying around that is throwing off the neutrons.

They might have a chance with the core vessel.

[truedelphi]

23. Thank you for this impoortant news item.

Very disturbing.

[girl gone mad]

33. Okay, so I dug out one of my graduate textbooks..

"Atomic and Molecular Beam Methods" by Giacinto Scoles

From the foreword by John B. Fenn:

"Born in leaks, the original sin of vacuum technology, molecular beams are collimated wisps of molecules traversing the chambered void that is their theatre like companies of players framed by some proscenium arch. On stage for only milliseconds between their entrances and exits, they have captivated an ever growing audience by the variety and range of their repertoire."

The book covers methods for producing beams, beam sources, applications, detection methods, velocity measurements, scattering, and experimental methods using lasers.

It's been a long time since I've thought about beams and I only used this book for reference on some theoretical work I was doing, but beams are useful for studying particles and intermolecular forces and, in particular, how matter behaves microscopically.

In my unprofessional opinion, these beams would be evidence that at least one of the reactors was breached as early as 03/13.

ETA: Pure speculation on my part, but I think they were probably looking for evidence of beams because they suspected or anticipated a breach. The beam measurements would give them very precise information on the size and location of the leak.

[DeadEyeDyck]

37. Whoa there cowboy

I am not a nuclear physicist but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night. Neutrons are not only sub-molecular. They are sub-atomic. They are an Uncharged particle which means that they have little chance to interact with matter. They only will interact with collisions.

The danger to living organisms is the secondary ionization of human tissue that releases a proton spike. Protons are charged and therefore interact richly with matter. Neutrons are hard to measure and generally all that is measured is the hypothetical damage it may do to living matter. The device used to capture them is a large cask filled with bear fat.

Neutrons are only released during fission. When a reactor is shut down, the release is negligible. The fact that a neutron beam was detected is indicative that the secondary shielding has shifted or been breached.

That is the extent of my borrowed knowledge from my Uncle who is the Engineer on a Navy Nuke sub.

[ursu5]

38. recriticality

Yes, it comes from fission and it is possible the damaged or melted fuel has pooled or aggregated into a critical mass. TEPCO said the probability was not zero and perhaps this indicates that it has occurred.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110324a6.html

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7706

[girl gone mad]

39. Actually, electrical neutrality is the reason neutrons are most useful for studying matter.

Neutrons will travel through the electron cloud and penetrate far into the nuclei, transferring energy and interfering with nuclear particles. These nuclear interactions are what a lot of researchers are after since that's where most of the mass of a substance is.

Even after criticality is halted in a nuclear reactor, neutrons are being emitted through the ongoing radioactive processes inside of each fuel rod. The boron-10 will absorb neutrons in the channels between the fuel rods, but it doesn't stop all nuclear activity. Without having data on the intensity of the beams, there's no way to know if this was an expected number based on the low level remaining fission or if it was an indication that the fuel was melting and chain reactions were happening. They did add boric acid to the cores when they flooded them with seawater, maybe a sign that they were concerned about this.

[girl gone mad]

40. meant to add..

a neutron beam is technically a particle beam, but it will share a lot of properties with atomic beams because of the electrical neutrality. In relativity, we were using both atomic and neutron beams to test aspects of spacetime structure, for example.