News

23320 readers

3187 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

216

Plutonium levels near US atomic site in Los Alamos similar to Chornobyl, study finds (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Much of the land near the atomic bomb’s birthplace was converted to recreational areas, but toxic waste remains

Soil, plants and water along popular recreation spots near Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, are contaminated with “extreme concentrations” of plutonium, a new study has found, but calls for the federal government to act have been dismissed.

Michael Ketterer, a Northern Arizona University scientist and lead researcher on the project, said the plutonium levels in and around New Mexico’s Acid Canyon were among the highest he had ever seen in a publicly accessible area in the US during his decades-long career – comparable to what is found in Ukraine at the site of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

The radioactive isotopes are “hiding in plain sight”, Ketterer said.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Do you mean geologic, not geographic?

How does that work though? Sedimentary rocks formed in the last 100 years must be way deeper than any of the soil that could be affected by the atmosphere?

Or am I overthinking this and you're saying that there's an indicator in recent soil deposits that correlates to radioactive testing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The current geological era will have measurable levels of radioactive isotopes different from expectations. Just like we can tell when plants started making oxygen from the Fossil record and rock chemistry, we'll be able to tell when humans started having some physics fun time in the atmosphere.

Other fun fact is that we've added a decent set of new markers for future archeologists to date things with.
I think we've caused some of the carbon dating techniques to need a little * in the future, since we've shifted the baseline level around quite a bit.
We also added some new radioactive isotopes to the mix, like strontium, which show up in your teeth. Not new-new, but measurably increased levels.
We can actually use the levels in your teeth to predict your age within a year or two.

The discovery of this is part of what motivated the partial nuclear test ban that had both the US and Soviet Union stop testing in the atmosphere.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Fun fact! This is also how we know when certain asteroids smashed into the earth, because the impact deposits a layer of minerals and elements not found super common in the crust.

Also, sensing equipment that uses or detects radiation as part of its function has to be made of non-radioactive materials in order to not interfere. And since hairless apes started cracking atoms open, all steel is ever so slightly radioactive. They need special preparations to make steel without any isotopes present. This also means pre-1945 steel fetches a higher price in some instances.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Maybe it's soil vs rock? I think that there wouldnt have been enough time for new layers to form given how slow of a process it is

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah it's in the soil. It can be dated.
I did mean geologic. Coffee was only beginning to be consumed when I wrote that.