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from the radioactive-cats-have-18-half-lives dept.
Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) said it has found small amounts of radioactive isotopes of cobalt, ruthenium and caesium in air samples collected in Helsinki between 16 and 17 June. Radiation authorities in Sweden and Norway have reported similar findings.
Pia Vesterbacka, who heads environmental radiation surveillance at STUK, said there was no cause for alarm as the detected radioactive material was too minute to pose any risk.
"The amount of radioactive particles is very small and has no impact on the environment or human health," she explained.
Samples from Finland's seven other radiation monitoring stations have yet to be analysed.
...
"Investigations are still ongoing...at this point we would not want to come out and say the radiation originated in Russia," she said.
Also on Radio Free Europe, pointing to a tweet of Lassina Zerbo, the head of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, tweet that shows a map of the possible source region in the 72h preceding detection.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 29 2020, @06:53PM
You can trivially look at the ratios of various short lived to various long lived isotopes to tell how long ago "whatever it was" was fissioning.
Also fission process itself produces "stuff" and soaking "stuff" in or not in a neutron field results in different isotope ratios. So you can tell roughly how long whatever it was, was up and running (like was it a core run hard for 10 years with little breaks then its a leaky land reactor, or run on and off for twenty years it was a disposed of naval reactor, or if it was something fresh that failed soon after powering up like a bomb)
Of course plenty of leaky stuff at processing plants also.
I'd guess the various semi-cooperative military sites know 1000x as much as is being released to the public. Depending on stolen/shared intel I bet the Finnish military knows which site and device is leaking, not just "something". But if you admit that the results match device X in location Y, you're also admitting you somehow obtained the data about site X and location Y which will make the usual spy agencies all wound up.