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01.07.2016 11:37
© IAEA
Japanese scientists have discovered a new kind of nuclear fallout from the Fukushima NPP disaster, Forbes reported.
Radioactive cesium—specifically, cesium-137—is one of the waste products of nuclear power. It’s also one of the most dangerous substances in a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima. Until now, scientists and disaster experts thought cesium-137 fallout from the Fukushima reactor meltdown was in its soluble form. That guided their cleanup efforts, like removing and washing topsoil, and helped them map where radiation might spread.
Satoshi Utsunomiya, a geochemist at Kyushu University in Japan, announced over the weekend that he had found cesium-137 in a new form: trapped inside tiny glass particles that spewed from the damaged reactors. He found the particles in air filters placed around Tokyo at the time of the disaster.
While similar particles have been found following the Chernobyl disaster, they were only discovered in the 30 km-perimeter around the power plant. The discovery of the Japanese scientists would likely lead to changes in the models used to predict where radioactive particles will go and how long they will stay there. It might also change how cesium-137 is treated during cleanup and monitoring.
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