The media are trying to blame the Russians (Of course 🙂 ).. there has also been other reactor problems in Europe..
Norway has damaged fuel in its Halden research reactor since Oct last year 2016 (reported) and it is releasing Iodine 131 but they said then that they are filtering the releases and none is getting out of the building.. Ukraine is straining their reactors because right wing Kiev mobs are blocking coal from the Russian eastern side.
This last week the Eurdep mapping was turned off in Ukraine, Poland and Russian monitoring was stopped for the same period and these monitoring stations are still offline today .. And in another incident, there has been a release a few days ago from Spain I think? ..
Also Irelands rad monitoring was switched off on Sunday morning, probably because of a release from Flamanville (France) that is having problems getting restarted or maybe Sellafield (UK) .. some small evidence on the Irish EURDEP for that (I have a screenshot above ) .. A reactor in Germany is off gassing with a very high spike shown on the Eurdep monitor map from last week probably due to maintenance or refueling of the reactor.
On the widely January 2017 reported release likely from the ancient Budapest Medical Isotope Institute in Hungary
Hervé Courtois “In November 2011, for example, iodine-131 had been detected in air in several European countries and the survey4 had led to the rejection of iodine-131 from a radioisotope production institute in Budapest ( Hungary). Measurements carried out by the CRIIRAD laboratory in November 2011 confirmed a significant contamination of the vegetation with iodine-131 and iodine-125 in Budapest, several kilometers from this nuclear site.”
Criirad file on the January 2017 release in French (use Google translate); http://balises.criirad.org/pdf/CP%20%20CRIIRAD%20170214%20%20I131%20Europe.pdf
Eurdep radiation mapping mostly gets switched of when there is an unintended release. This is done by the IAEA to protect the nuclear industry and have it seem in a better light.
Link to Eurdep, Europes radiation maps http://eurdepweb.jrc.ec.europa.eu/EurdepMap/Disclaimer.aspx
An example of a switch off and peaks before from Ireland withing the last week (possibly to do with Flamanville or Sellafield nuclear sites;
In short the January release was due to the Budapest Medical Isotope Institute and the IAEA are covering it up again. A shortage of medical isotopes is causing increased releases of a number of isotopes and Iodine 131 is the easiest to measure. The pollution near the source should be made public as this area will have contaminated milk an vegetables. It is a crime that under privileged children are allowed to get cancer so that over privileged adults can be treated for cancer!
Here is the report on the Thorium reactor in Norway called Halden; : Incident in Oct and report from Nov 2016; http://www.nrpa.no/en/news/93500/update-on-the-situation-at-research-reactor-ife-halden-norway
In other news mentioned in the report .. Toshiba shares falling further; https://nuclear-news.net/2017/02/21/toshiba-shares-fell-from-around-250-yen-apiece-to-186-yen-by-the-end-of-monday/
UK and French nuclear news
EDF faces £1m a day bill to keep Flamanvile nuclear reactor offline
Report by Shaun McGee for Nuclear Hotseat
Sources for the show;
Eurdep, nuclear-news.net, Herve Courtois, CRIIRAD, Safecast, Bellona , NRPA (Norway) , Nikkei, US9.campaign , The Guardian, Building.co.uk
Is there a pointer to the Spain leak, please? You’re a bit vague about it here.
Thank you.
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The only evidence I had for that was the monitoring system on Eurdep was switched of in Spain which means that possibly a big spike has been removed, however there is some sign of a small plume hitting the monitor in North west spain here (around the 23, 24, 25 feb http://eurdepweb.jrc.ec.europa.eu/EurdepMap/TimeSeries.aspx?loc=3231&end=201702270110&int=W1&rad=1&test=0
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Thank you! Sorry about the delay responding.
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Incidentally, to my untutored eye, it looks as though there is a similar disturbance recorded at Ponteverda on 10th March.
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That is actually one of the few areas that produce natural Radon in quantity and it has a medical laboratory there as well.. So it would be hard to disseminate natural Radon and man made isotopes there… I do believe the Spanish reactors might have releases of gases during refuelling and incidents though.. The Spanish and Portugese monitors sometimes go off the mapping for a whaile to hide the spikes so they can be tracked.. Here is the Portugese radiation map for you to see what I mean (likely showing Natural radon ) https://www.lusoradon.com/mapa-de-radao-de-portugal
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