Most Ridiculous Anti-Nuclear Page I’ve seen Yet
June 16th, 2009
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Thanks to reader “Markus” for pointing out this website that takes anti-nuclear sentiment, conspiracy theories and general lunacy and anti-science to the next level. This isn’t just untrue or politically motivated like most of the stuff out there – it’s bats**t crazy.
Here is a taste of what this site contains:
Worst case scenario
As radiation is being artificially produced more than it escapes the earth, it’s just a matter of time when the atmosphere will set on fire, burning nitrogen into carbon. It was speculated whether it would happen already with the first atomic test explosion. Now with the multiplied background radiation, it would be almost certain if the biggest existing bomb were detonated.And the bees? Added ionization alters the electromagnetic field bees use to navigate. They fly off too high and the colonies are getting lost.
Interesting perspective. The bees would not be able to navigate? Does that really matter all that much when the atmosphere is ignited in a massive nuclear reaction? At that point, I’d have to think that it’s pretty inconsequential whether or not bees can find their colony.
Of course, this is all a load of BS. At the time of the first nuclear test in 1945, there was indeed some speculation that the test could ignite the earth’s atmosphere by causing the fusion of the nitrogen atoms in a reaction that would not stop until the atmosphere had been completely depleted and the earth wiped clean by the massive explosion in the process. The hypothesis that this could happen was put forward by Edward Teller - a scientist known for having a flare for the dramatic. (he also put on sun tan lotion before the test.)
Before the test of the weapon a few simple calculations were done which showed that this reaction could not occur and even if there were some fusion of nitrogen atoms, it could not sustain itself to grow into a major reaction. Thus the fear was quashed before the test even was conducted. It was not really the ionizing radiation or neutron flux that made the notion of igniting the atmosphere become a concern but rather the extreme heat and pressure of the explosion.
Neutron flux
In a nuclear reactor every fission produces 2-3 neutrons but only one is needed to sustain the chain reaction. So it’s evident that most of the neutrons escape into the environment. There they transform substances into radioactive isotopes and increase the background radiation level.
This cannot be prevented and thus is silenced. The 30 year maximum operating time, however, derives from the fact that then the whole power plant structure along with the soil underneath becomes neutron-saturated and the radiation in the surroundings increases drastically.
Neutron flux is hardly measured at all. Partly because they are hard to detect (as the speed varies from a floating stage to few kilometers per second). They are moderated to travel under the escape velocity of earth (11 km/s) so they can’t escape all the way to space as gravitation pulls them back. Other reason is the cumulative harm they cause to the biosphere and to human health. Nuclear power industry just dismisses that.
That’s just ridiculous. Neutrons are not difficult to detect and can be detected with a variety of instruments. Neutron flux is monitored because it’s one of the most important variables in a reactor’s operation.
The fact that fission reactions product more than a single neutron does not mean they are released into the environment. Rather, these neutrons are absorbed by control rods, by the moderator, by uranium-238 atoms or by fission byproducts, some of which have large neutron capture cross-secti0ns. The reason that light water reactors require enriched uranium is that the moderator absorbs some of the neutrons. (as do many other things). If a neutron did get out of the reactor, it wouldn’t matter that much. Neutrons don’t need to be sent off into space. If it doesn’t bond with something, a neutron will eventually just decay.
Also, reactors do not have a 30 year life span. There’s really no finite life span to a nuclear reactor and there are many that have operated for much longer than thirty years. The fact that many reactors have an expected life of thirty years is simply that this is roughly the amount of time that a power reactor is expected to be in service before a combination of wear and tear and obsolesce of components makes it more economical to retire it in favor of a new reactor. This is not set in stone, however, many reactors have had life-extension modifications to allow for many decades of operation.
Now for the most crazy portion of them all:
Beta-flare
Reddish glowing air above a nuclear power plants is called a beta-flare. The name comes from the main cause for the phenomenon which is free neutrons decaying into protons and electrons. On top of that beta-flare is a mixture of all kinds of radiation and ionization. When ions (like the proton from a neutron decay) receive some replacement electrons, UV-light is produced. This in turn puts electrons on a charged orbit from witch they return by emitting visible light. Like in northern lights.The energies involved in beta-flare are sufficient to kill birds mid-flight. Or bring down airplanes if they defy the restricted area. Ionization breaks up molecules in tissue (lungs for example) or interferes with electronics. That’s why nuclear power plant even has a chimney; for fierce ventilation, to get rid of ions and excess neutrons within their quarter-an-hour lifetime. If the air flow stops, everyone inside the powerplant would die in 15 minutes or so. (This occurred in Tshernobyl, different case than the big accident.)
This is carefully obscured part of nuclear technology, covered with excessively bright lights pointing upwards and guards collecting the dead birds. But we got beta-flare on video when lighting was temporarily diminished at the Loviisa (Finland) power plant… while replacing bulbs with more distracting ones to prevent filming! As the phenomenon is mostly red, red filter is tested to take out industrial ambient light.
And there’s a page showing pictures of these “beta flares”…
According to the page, the way you photograph “beta flares” is as follows:
Effects of beta-flare can be distinguished even with a modest digital camera and a basic image editor. The best conditions for a power plant picture are gray sky and a hazy evening before the lights are turned on. Then you just have to apply contrast. Or enhance a separate colour channel. And there it is! If you were succesfull, the shape of the mysterious cloud of color reveals it’s origin: the pipe that is said to exchaust nothing but air…
In other words, crank up the saturation on one of the color channels until it starts to look like this:
Yeah, seriously, someone actually believes this is a “beta flare” and is not aware that a grey sky contains low saturation and a roughly equal color balance – when one of the channels is increased enough it will start exaggerating the artifacts from image compression and will also tend to produce more color saturation around the lighter areas of the sky. This happens with any photo. If you mess with the color settings enough, you can make it look all weird and scary.
I know, it’s probably not necessary to explain the flaw in these claims. They’re so nutty it’s just ridiculous
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, Paranormal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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June 17th, 2009 at 1:25 am
Confucted? I think you have just invented a new and useful word. I certainly know of a lot of tests that were confucted.
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June 17th, 2009 at 2:10 am
Joel Upchurch said:
That was a typographical error. Not sure how I missed it the first time through. My spelling is bad, but it is not *that* bad.
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June 17th, 2009 at 2:14 am
The fevered babblings of a delusional paranoid. But you are right this sort of thing makes Helen Caldicott sound almost reasonable.
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June 17th, 2009 at 2:48 am
The whole idea of the bomb at trinity igniting the atmosphere was dismissed very quickly and the fact that it was talked about before the test seems to be mostly a tongue-in-cheek joke to scare the less learned research assistants. Nobody with any knowledge seriously believed that would happen. Their biggest fear was that the bomb would not work at all because of some kind of malfunction with the implosion system or something.
There is a story that Enrico Fermi offered a wager on the bomb igniting the atmosphere (he bet it would not) and offered astronomical odds on it: if he lost and it ignited the atmosphere he’d pay several thousand, but if he was right he only got a few bucks. His reasoning was not just that he was sure it would not happen but because if he was wrong, nobody would be able to collect anyway.
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June 17th, 2009 at 7:02 am
How do you burn nitrogen into carbon, especially considering that transmutation of heavier nitrogen into lighter carbon would be endothermic?
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June 17th, 2009 at 7:46 am
I am now more stupid for having read that page.
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June 17th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Hi,
I have a couple of questions about your blog:
1) Is it OK with you if I spread some link love and link to your blog? I think my visitors would like your blog.
2) I noticed on your blog that you link to other blogs… do you think its possible for you to link to my blog myairshoes.com?
Please let me know what you think. Thanks for your time.
Frances
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June 17th, 2009 at 8:07 am
Josh said:
Duh! Magic
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June 17th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Josh said:
One of the reactions in the CNO cycle turns nitrogen-15 + proton into carbon-12 + He-4. However, the reason it’s called a cycle is that it keeps cycling through various isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in a cyclical fashion. The net result of the CNO cycle is to turn 4 protons into a helium-4 nuclei.
2 is a ‘magic’ number. Since He-4 has both 2 protons and 2 neutrons that makes He-4 ‘doubly magic’ and very stable. The reason alpha decay is so common as to have a special name is that He-4 is much more stable than other light nuclei like deuterium or lithium-6.
If this is the reaction they’re refering to there are several problems. It’s a hot fusion reaction and doesn’t occur at room temperature. The nitrogen in the atmosphere is 99.6% N-14, which is the wrong type. It’s known as a cycle for a reason; it cycles through various isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen with the net result of turning 4 protons into a helium-4 nucleus, 2 positrons and 2 electron neutrinos.
Helium-4 fusion is exceedingly difficult. Fusing two helium-4 nuclei consumes 92 keV of energy. Be-8 has a half-life of just 0.1 to 0.26 femtoseconds. During its brief existance Be-8 can fuse with another He-4 nuclei into carbon-12, a strongly exothermic reaction. Only in very hot and dense stars does this become a dominant reaction.
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June 17th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Mister Fisk said:
Doubly so in fact. 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82 and 126 are considered ‘magic’ because that’s the number of protons or neutrons you need to fill a shell and these nuclides have higher binding energy per nucleon than would be expected with the semi-empirical mass formula. The CNO cycle is only possible because helium-4 is doubly magic.
Another curious factoid: Pb-208 is the most stable nuclide with 82 protons and 126 neutrons. Bismuth-209 has been dethroned(It is merely very, very long lived). I wonder what reaction you’d get if you give an anti-nuke a pretty little bismuth crystal and tell them it will be radioactive for tens of quintillions of years.
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June 17th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Frances said:
Thanks. I always appreciate that.
Frances said:
Well… I don’t generally put links up just for the heck of it or because I like the site. It is generally something that is science-related or topical in some way. Nothing against your site, but I’m not sure how that fits in the scheme of things.
You can enter your site on the website field when you leave comments and that will make your name link back to your site.
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June 17th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
“Confucted” has now been added to my vocabulary. In the software/networking biz, I can use it almost every day.
Finrod: I believe the correct phrase would be: “I am now more stupider for having read that page.” Thanks for the warning! I read it with my sunglasses on just to be careful.
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June 17th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I think that the atmosphere really did ignite during the A-bomb test, and the rest, as they say, is history. “If you want to know what it feels like to be in a black hole, look around.” Carl Sagan said that before he died. He’s no dummy.
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June 17th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
From the end of the page about “beta-flare”
“Multiple filters reveal some blobs of colour but YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AN EXPERT to say that yes, one of them is beta-flare.”
That’s the only remotely accurate statement on the entire page, though “You have to be anything other than an expert” would be truly accurate.
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June 17th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
I couldn’t bring myself to follow the links to the site. Just the snippets in the Buzz’s article made me gasp at how ludicrous it is.
FYI: A neutron will only travel a maximum of about 30 feet in air before it will be slowed and stopped at which point it collects an electron and becomes a hydrogen atom or it becomes incorporated into the nucleus of another atom (neutron activation). Materials with a lot of hydrogen, e.g. water, slow neutrons quickly with very few neutron activation products. Gee, guess what they use in reactors – water. There is some neutron activation in the walls of the containment vessal, but absolutely none beyond that.
I pulled up a cool forest/clouds/break-in-the-clouds picture I have and followed the instructions above. Dang forest has a wicked beta-flare. I guess we better cut it down and see if the government has a secret nuclear facility underneath it.
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June 17th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
leg said:
No. Neutrons are neutral particles and cannot bind an electron and become hydrogen. If it does not get captured by another nucleus it will eventually emit an electron and become a proton(i.e. hydrogen nucleus) with a 15 minute half-life.
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June 18th, 2009 at 1:18 am
Soylent said:
Actually neutrons don’t have a half-life, which is interesting to note. They have a “mean lifetime” of 15 minutes but it’s not a “half-life” like you would see in a radioactive neucleus. If it were a half-life you’d have a 50% chance that any given neutron would decay in 15 minutes and after 15 minutes a group of neutrons would be halved, such that in 30 minutes you’d have 1/4 of the original sample and then in 45 minutes 1/8.
With free neutrons, they actually don’t follow that kind of pattern. They take an average of around 15 minutes, but it’s not evenly distributed. Just about zero neutrons will decay in 1 minute and just about zero will continue to have not decayed after something like 25 minutes. They all take around 15 minutes. IE: some will decay around 14 minutes and some might last as long as 16 or 17, but they’re in a steep bell curve.
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June 18th, 2009 at 7:04 am
drbuzz0 said:
That’s VERY odd and I clearly need to do some reading up on free neutrons. The kind of exponential distribution of time until decay of a nucleus you get with unstable nuclides stems from their memorylessness(constant chance of decaying per unit time). I wouldn’t expect neutrons to have any kind of ‘memory’.
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June 18th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Soylent said:
You know I might have to take that back. I distinctly remember reading about this, but it *might* have related to a circumstance where a neutron started off at high speed and it was factoring in the fact that they were relativistic to begin with and thus experienced time differently in a neutron source which produced extremely high energy neutrons..
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June 18th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Man I feel stupid now that I said that with such authority like it was a known fact and now going back I’m pretty sure I am wrong and I was thinking of how almost no neutrons from a spallation source decayed until they hit the moderator which slowed them down to non-relativistic speeds. I read it totally wrong. I’m an idiot.
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June 18th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
I think the best way to see beta flare is with Kirlian photography…
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October 8th, 2010 at 6:59 am
This is awesome bad. I so want to build an entire website mocking this guy and see if I can get him to take it seriously. His ’science’ is about as sound as, “Gamma rays will turn you green and make you super strong.”
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