[Update:] A new report identifies the source and states that the detected radiation level, though much higher than background level and now since subsided, posed no health risk:
The radioactive cesium 137 detected by the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) on the 3rd and 4th of March has now been traced back to the garage and parts of the basement of the building in which STUK operates. The same property complex also houses a company that treats small radioactive waste. The premises in question have been isolated and the measurements continue. Areas in the immediate vicinity of the property will be examined on Wednesday morning by STUK’s own measurements.
“The investigation concerning the source of the radiation is still ongoing. The concentrations measured have been very low and do not pose a threat to health. The staff and people who’ve visited STUK’s premises are not in any danger,” says STUK’s director Tarja K. Ikäheimonen.
Caesium-137 [1] levels in the air of Helsinki, Finland has reached 1000 times normal the normal level The measured value in the air is 4000 μBq / m³. STUK.fi the Finish radiation emergency authority says that it can't yet explain the result, but that it may be an indication that something has happened. They are quick to add it's NOT believed the Cesium came from a nuclear reactor like the Leningrad nuclear plant.
The levels are 10 times higher in Helsinki then what they measured after the Fukushima disaster. However, the levels are just one millionth compared to when people would need to protect themselves. The winds were eastern and southeastern when the measurement was made in Finland.
Also reported by Liveuamap.com and hbl.fi. The site allegedlyapparent.wordpress.com has more data.
[1] [Ed #2. addition] Yes, "Caesium". According to Wikipedia:
Caesium is the spelling recommended by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). The American Chemical Society (ACS) has used the spelling cesium since 1921, following Webster's New International Dictionary. The element was named after the Latin word caesius , meaning "bluish grey". In medieval and early modern writings caesius was spelled with the ligature æ as cæsius; hence, an alternative but now old-fashioned orthography is cæsium. More spelling explanation at ae/oe vs e.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10 2016, @10:37PM
Test run for a dirty bomb?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Zinho on Thursday March 10 2016, @10:40PM
Per the STUK website: [www.stuk.fi]
The radioactive cesium 137 detected by the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) on the 3rd and 4th of March has now been traced back to the garage and parts of the basement of the building in which STUK operates.
No power plant leak, just stray fumes from waste storage.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10 2016, @10:43PM
This "news" spent a few days in the "submitted stories" graveyard, and it may have been noteworthy that no credible news site picked it up in the meantime. If the "editor" had bothered to click on the link to stuk.fi, s/he would have seen another news article from the very same day that tracks the origin of this single anomalous reading in their sensor network to a hazardous waste company on the same premises.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10 2016, @10:59PM
That's all I needed to read to know not to bother with any of the links. One millionth? Let's not even begin the conversation until it is one million times higher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @12:18AM
Oh, come on now. What's a few orders of magnitude among friends?
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Friday March 11 2016, @12:29AM
Or in this case, a few orders of magnitude worth of orders of magnitude...
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday March 11 2016, @12:16AM
Agreed:
Grouping three dodgy website links together can't compensate for the fact all three of them are dodgy.
There are seemingly an ever growing number of these crap news sites that throw in just enough true stories to troll readers into citing them.
Shame on Bitstream for submitting this, boo-hiss to CoolHand for spending all that time chasing a spelling issue while letting a troll post nonsense.
Google works for BOTH of you guys. Use it.
There are lots of "interesting" stories I see and pass-up because I can't find any verification.
Humans ground up in Chicken Nuggets. [foxnews3.com] Not so says Snopes [snopes.com].
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by itn on Friday March 11 2016, @08:23AM
Not sure what did you mean by the "noteworthy" part? The story was picked up by both our largest Finnish-speaking (Helsingin Sanomat) and Swedish-speaking (Hufvudstadbladet) newspapers on the 7th, a day before this story was submitted. Did you mean "no credible English news site" or something along those lines? Also, what do you try to say by "credibility"? Did the Cesium levels not rise up to 1000 times higher?
The original submission is not very good. But in summary: the radiation times did rise over 1000 times higher than normal. This did not pose a health threat. The source was found. The first two are made clear in the original submission, and the third is something the editor should've added before publishing (just like you said). Still, this was newsworthy, if not BBC World headline material or very exciting after finding out the source. Soylent News was just slow to report on it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bitstream on Thursday March 10 2016, @10:44PM
The source has been found [www.stuk.fi]. Sloppy handling of radioactive materials by a company in the same building as the authority for radiation and nuclear safety (STUK). News can also be found at indecipherable yle.fi [yle.fi] Finland's national public-broadcasting company, founded in 1926. Automatic translation services are essential.
Take home, people make mistakes. Physics takes no prisoners.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Jiro on Thursday March 10 2016, @10:46PM
The authorities don't believe it came from a nuclear plant. The radio station that wrote the linked article concludes it came from the Leningrad nuclear plant.
At this point I'm more inclined to trust the authorities. The radiation concentration is not high enough that they would benefit from lying, and I suspect that the radio station doesn't have the expertise to know about what factors might rule out a nuclear power plant. They're not scientists.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 10 2016, @10:53PM
Even worse, that radio station doesn't cite their sources..
But when other sources backed it then it seemed believable to some extent.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10 2016, @11:35PM
Putin farted.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10 2016, @11:47PM
If only the editor had spent that time following up on the news story instead of writing a digression as long as the original story on why you absolutely must spell cesium with an unnecessary silent "a"..
and to top it off, his spelling citation came from *Wikipedia* (not Wikipaedia). Nobody misses that extra "a". English spelling is inconsistent enough as it is without insisting on archaic spellings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @12:08AM
Meh, shut up. I'm sure the editor(s) will update the story once things clear up.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday March 11 2016, @11:47AM
The reason
why you absolutely must spell caesium with a necessary silent "a"
is because IUPAC outranks ACS (ftfy, btw)
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @09:42PM
"Outranks"? You have such a chip on your shoulder that you've made up some ranking system?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday March 11 2016, @12:18AM
I should put something more constructive here... Sorry :D
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Friday March 11 2016, @12:43AM
It's REEEII DEEEOOOO ACTIVE
Panic!
smh, here we go again. The press has such a disproportionate fear of things. Apart from Mme Curie, those poor unfortunate souls at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima and the occasional radiologist, (and yes, Litvinenko) hardly anyone has ever died of radiation exposure or radiation poisoning. The impact of radiation on humanity in all of human history has been practically nil (and all the pedants are warming up about radon and natural radiation - well fuck you pedants, that's background and already built in to the stats). Far more people die of preventable things like car accidents, far more teenagers around the world commit suicide just over the general angst of being 14, 15 or 16 or that really depressing new song that just came out. In short, statistically speaking, radiation has never had nor will ever have any significant impact on your life. And to the guy at the back raising his hand to ask "what if there's a nuclear war?" I say if you survive you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that since I live close to a target of major strategic importance - I didn't. Congratulations.
Sometimes I despair of humanity and have to cuddle my dogs until the spiders go away...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @12:53AM
Banana can be scary to some, I guess.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday March 11 2016, @02:27AM
When the story broke. There were few sources and little info just like when other big things happen. Therefore were it was hard to then judge if were a reason for concern or just a dud story. And the story sat too long in the submission queue. Now at the time of publishing things are clear for anyone. Not so when it was submitted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @04:47AM
"Levels one million times less . . ."
What is so unclear about that?
(Score: 1) by WalksOnDirt on Friday March 11 2016, @07:36AM
Let's see. One time less would mean there is none, so one million times less should be 999,999 times less than none. What does that even mean?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @10:40AM
Math fail. Please shoot yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @12:47PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls [wikipedia.org]
Counting deaths is using a bit too wide brush (no pun intended) to picture the situation.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday March 11 2016, @03:23AM
4000 micro-Becquerel/cubic meter.
That means that there's one decay in a cubic meter of air every 250 seconds. By comparison, radon levels range from about 10 Bq/m3 to 30 Bq/m3 in the open air on land. So, this is 2500 to 7500 times less than that.
Nuclear monitoring instrumentation is seriously sensitive.
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Friday March 11 2016, @08:57AM
Caesium-137 Levels in Helsinki, Finland
You mean Helsinki, Sweden.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Friday March 11 2016, @09:04AM
Ah, the good old days when it was Helsingfors eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @10:11AM
What the hell dude? WHAT THE HELL?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 11 2016, @02:42PM
What?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday March 11 2016, @03:43PM
Go and watch Die Hard.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @08:53PM
*exactly* what I thought when I read the article.
Now where's my copy of "Hostage/Terrorist, Terrorist/Hostage, a Study in Duality?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12 2016, @10:18AM
Causing the poor bastards to get less nookie! https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/03/05/0247246 [soylentnews.org]