- #1
robinson
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Having followed a few threads due to Fukushima, and having read a lot of media reports, pdfs beyond number, scoured the Wikipedia pages for days, even cracked a book or two, I just realized I don't know the answer to a simple question. I was looking for a thread to ask it in, then realized that was selfish and short sited. Much like this opening paragraph is becoming.
There may be more questions, other people may want to chime in, the whole thing could very well start a chain reaction. But enough of that.
The query is this: Why and how do hydrogen bombs create radioactive cesium, iodine, and other dangerous fallout particles?
For example
I've read from multiple sources that the world is already lightly dusted with all the isotopes that come from a leaking reactor, or burning fuel pond. But why would a bomb that contains just plutonium create all the same radionuclides?
And why so much of them? I thought a small part of the plutonium was turned into energy, thus the boom. Why and how and where did all the dangerous fallout come from?
There may be more questions, other people may want to chime in, the whole thing could very well start a chain reaction. But enough of that.
The query is this: Why and how do hydrogen bombs create radioactive cesium, iodine, and other dangerous fallout particles?
For example
The unleashed isotopes of concern from the damaged Japanese reactors - Iodine-131, Cesium-137, Strontium-90 and Plutonium-239 - are well known to the Marshall Islanders living downwind of the testing sites at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the central Pacific, following sixty-seven A- and H-bombs exploded between 1946-58. In fact, it is precisely these isotopes that continue to haunt the 80,000 Marshallese fifty-three years after the last thermonuclear test in the megaton range shook their pristine coral atolls and contaminated their fragile marine ecosystems.
In fact, it was the irradiated downwind Marshallese on Rongelap and Utrik in 1954 caught in the Bravo fallout - and I-131 - that taught the world about the thyroid effect from the uptake of radioactive iodine.
The U.S.' largest [fusion] hydrogen bomb - Bravo - was 1,000 times the Hiroshima atomic [fission] bomb, and deposited a liberal sprinkling of these and a potent potpourri of 300 other radionuclides over a wide swath of the Central Pacific and the inhabited atolls in the Marshalls archipelago in March 1954 during "Operation Castle."
I've read from multiple sources that the world is already lightly dusted with all the isotopes that come from a leaking reactor, or burning fuel pond. But why would a bomb that contains just plutonium create all the same radionuclides?
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/201...sed-by-bomb-test-fallout-15000-of-them-fatal/The CDC report examined 18 additional isotopes that were spewed by the bomb tests, including strontium-90 and cesium-137, which are dangerous for between 280 and 300 years. Moreover, cesium-137 makes up 40 percent of total fallout in a given test. Together, a test’s cesium, zirconium-95, carbon-14 and strontium-90 make up 76 percent of the total radioactive fallout from most tests.
And why so much of them? I thought a small part of the plutonium was turned into energy, thus the boom. Why and how and where did all the dangerous fallout come from?