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Secret Russian Nuclear Accident (Mayak Complex; Urals; 2017)

EnolaGaia

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...
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This article provides an overview of newly-published research that seems to confirm the widely-detected atmospheric release of Ru-106 in 2017 resulted from an as-yet unacknowledged nuclear accident in the Ural region - most probably at the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing complex.

The estimated total amount of radiation released in this apparent accident exceeded the estimated total radiation escape from Fukushima by circa 30 - 100 times. However, by virtue of Ru-106's relatively short half-life and dispersal in the atmosphere, no significant threat to humans has been attributed to this incident.

Except for the obvious factor of national embarrassment, it's unclear why the Russians have not acknowledged the accident or event that caused this ruthenium release.
Mysterious Radiation Cloud Over Europe Traced to Secret Russian Nuclear Accident

A vast cloud of nuclear radiation that spreadover continental Europe in 2017 has been traced to an unacknowledged nuclear accident in southern Russia, according to an international team of scientists.

The experts say the cloud of radiation detected over Europe in late September 2017 could only have been caused by a nuclear fuel-reprocessing accident at the Mayak Production Association, a nuclear facility in the Chelyabinsk region of the Ural Mountains in Russia, sometime between noon on Sept. 26 and noon on Sept. 27.

Russia confirmed that a cloud of nuclear radiation was detected over the Urals at the time, but the country never acknowledged any responsibility for a radiation leak, nor has it ever admitted that a nuclear accident took place at Mayak in 2017. ...

The lead author of the new research, nuclear chemist Georg Steinhauser of Leibniz University in Hanover, Germany, said that more than 1,300 atmospheric measurements from around the world showed that between 250 and 400 terabecquerels of radioactive ruthenium-106 had been released during that time.

In early October 2017, several European countries detected elevated levels of ruthenium-106 above the continent. Based on concentration levels, the likely source of contamination was located around the Ural Mountains. ...

Ruthenium-106 is a radioactive isotope of ruthenium, meaning that it has a different number of neutrons in its nucleus than the naturally occurring element has. The isotope can be produced as a byproduct during nuclear fission of uranium-235 atoms.

Although the resulting cloud of nuclear radiation was diluted enough that it caused no harm to people beneath it, the total radioactivity was between 30 and 100 times the level of radiation released after the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011, Steinhauser told Live Science.

The research was published today (July 29) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/66050-radiation-cloud-secret-russian-nuclear-accident.html

PUBLISHED PAPER:
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/07/25/1907571116
 
Does anyone recall hearing or reading anything at all about this ?

I don't, and I watch a lot of news.

INT21.
 
I've heard it mentioned, though at the time they didn't know the source of the cloud.
 
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