Detecting Cs137 in South Germany скачать в хорошем качестве

Detecting Cs137 in South Germany

Measuring Cs-137 in Bavarian Soil (Gamma Spectrometry) In this video, I take a soil sample from the Bavarian woods and analyze it using gamma spectrometry. The goal was a simple qualitative check for anthropogenic radioactivity coming from the Chernobyl NPP disaster. The half-life of Cs137 is about 30 years, so a bit more than one half-life has passed, still too far away from the 10 half-life rule (The "10 Half-Life Rule" is a practical guideline used in radiological protection and nuclear waste management. It states that if you wait for 10 half-lives to pass, the radioactivity of a source will have diminished to a level that is generally considered negligible or indistinguishable from natural background radiation. So for Cs137 it is then about 300 years....) Equipment used: Spectrometers: KC761C & Radiacode 102 Shielding: Self-built lead castle (to reduce background) Software: InterSpec (Open Source) The Result: We can clearly identify the presence of Cesium-137 (Cs-137) in the soil, a remnant of past fallout (likely Chernobyl). Please note this is a qualitative finding only—without efficiency calibration, I cannot determine the exact concentration (Bq/kg). Apologies for my English and the basic video editing—this is just a hobby! Thanks for watching. Topic: Scintillators vs Geiger-Müller-Tubes - bettergeiger.com/thedetector Topic: NuclearWeapons Tests VS Chernobyl Fallout in Bavaria/Austria (intensity and soil depth difference. Analysis via truffle and wild boar examination): Environ. Sci. Technol. 2023, 57, 36, 13601–13611 Disproportionately High Contributions of 60 Year Old Weapons-137Cs Explain the Persistence of Radioactive Contamination in Bavarian Wild Boars; Felix Stäger, Dorian Zok, Anna-Katharina Schiller, Bin Feng, Georg Steinhauser; ---During nuclear fission in reactors or nuclear weapons, "cesium-135 is also released at the same time, a cesium isotope with a significantly longer half-life," according to study author Bin Feng from the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at Leibniz University Hannover and the TRIGA Center Atominstitut at TU Wien. The mixing ratio of the two cesium types, 137 and 135, differs depending on the source. By measuring the ratio of these isotopes to each other, one can determine where the radioactive material originated. Cesium-135 has a long half-life and decays only rarely. Therefore, "it cannot simply be detected with radiation measurement devices," says Steinhauser. "One has to work with mass spectrometry methods and go to relatively great effort to distinguish it precisely from other atoms. We have now succeeded in doing that." The result: 90 percent of the cesium-137 in Central Europe originates from Chernobyl. However, in wild boar meat samples, this proportion is much lower. Here, the radioactivity has a different source: nuclear weapons tests that were conducted in the mid-20th century. In some samples, their contribution to the contamination was as high as 68 percent. But how does the decades-old radioactive material get into the bodies of today's wild boar? According to the study team, the answer is probably: via deer truffles. These underground-growing fungi, which the boars love to eat, accumulate radioactive cesium with a significant time delay. "Cesium migrates very slowly down through the soil, sometimes only about one millimeter per year," says Steinhauser. "The deer truffles, which are found at depths of 20 to 40 centimeters, are therefore only now absorbing the cesium that was released in Chernobyl. The cesium from old nuclear weapons tests, on the other hand, arrived there long ago." The deer truffles are therefore contaminated with radioactivity in multiple ways: on one hand, from the cesium that gradually spread through the soil after the nuclear weapons tests about 60 years ago, and on the other hand, now slowly also from the fallout after Chernobyl. This explains why the radioactive contamination of wild boar meat is not decreasing—and why it is to be expected that the situation will not improve in the coming years.--- #gammaspec #radiation #cs137 #hobbyphysicist #interspec #radiacode #kc761c #bavaria #chernobyl #Kc761 #scienceexperiment