If you understood nuclear physics, then you would quickly realise how deeply flawed that report is. One could drive a bus through the gaps in it’s arguments as I am about to do...
Untrue, the PTB did not undertake a Fission Track Analysis, therefore have no scientific basis for the claim that Soviet era tests, or Chernobyl were the source.by phylo_roadking on 14 Mar 2010, 06:01
(Thread Re: German Bomber modified for A Bomb Delivery)
The results of the Radionuklidanalysen are now available. The readings give no indication that sources other than the fallout of above-ground nuclear bomb tests in the 1950er/1960er years, and the reactor accident at Chernobyl in 1986 are responsible for soil contamination. Overall, the PTB measurement results for a nuclear explosion "no findings" show.
Where PTB allege Ohrdruf samples also gave evidence for 1950s/1960s era Atomic weapon tests then it equally follows there is evidence at Ohrdruf for a nuclear explosion.
What PTB are really saying in a very deceptive, false and misleading way is that they did not undertake the correct analysis of sample readings to determine and differentiate between a 1945 Atomic test and later Soviet era testing.
Actually Phylo you don’t know and neither does the PTB researcher Dr Janssen, whether Caesium 137 at Ohrdruf came from Chernobyl or not...by phylo_roadking on 14 Mar 2010, 06:01AS said several times before - the ONLY isotope found in ANY quantity above normal background levels was Caesium-137 from Chernobyl....how do we know it's from Chernobyl and not WWII?The PTB-testing of the present soil samples are thus complete: A total of Radionuklidanalysen showed no indication of a nuclear explosion in the Thuringian Ohrdruf. The soil samples show only contamination stemming in part by the reactor accident at Chernobyl. A scientific rebuttal to the alleged nuclear test at the end of World War II, but cannot with this nor any other sample analysis will be provided. A final assessment of the historical context is thus still open.
Had the PTB been able to determine the origin of Caesium 137 at Ohrdruf conclusively they would have disclosed that in their report, but did not. Indeed a careful reading of the PTB press release alludes to no Fission Track analysis at all which is the only scientific method to determine such a claim. It only required one 200mg sample of soil to conduct this test.
Caesium-137 was first released around sites used for early nuclear tests in 1945 (Carter & Moghissi) Widespread global dispersal of 137Cs to the environment began with high-yield thermonuclear tests in November 1952 (Perkins & Thomas). In these tests, 137CS was injected into the stratosphere where it circulates globally (Longmore) and takes an average 1.5~2 years to fall out of suspension. Caesium by its nature does not travel far from the location of a nuclear test, but by the action of high atmospheric testing this caused release of Caesium-137 into the stratosphere which finely redistributed it globally. Where it is concentrated locally however that is still considered a clear indicator of local nuclear tests.
Sources:
“Three Decades of Nuclear testing” 1977, Carter MW & Moghissi, AA.
“Transuranic Elements in the Environment,” Perkins RW & Thomas,CW 1980
“The Caesium-137 dating Technique and associated Applications in Australia,”1982, Longmore, ME
What you don’t understand Phylo is that since 2004 PTB has adopted a convention to manipulate figures arithmetically with GESPECOR software to average out the measured background levels of radiation at specific sites to conform to a national quarterly average. In sampling since 1987, there have been wide variations in readings of Caesium 137 and Plutonium all across Germany and the greatest problem PTB has, is defining exactly what the “normal background” level is?
You can’t say that definitively either for the reasons I have just stated above. Just because you say it is does not mean it is so. Nor is it so just because PTB says it is. PTB have not shown with careful analysis why it should be so and their report blends fact with subjective opinion of the report’s author relying on public naivety about methodology to blur the conclusion.by phylo_roadking on 14 Mar 2010, 06:01
And before you say it could have come from ANY "release" of fissionable material at the site - it most certainly could NOT relate to a SECOND WORLD WAR event...
Therefore Phylo you should cite a source for your claim that fissionable material at the site could not relate to any Second World War event. That is not proven at all by the PTB report therefore the PTB press release is not a source which has established sufficient credentials to assert such a thing.
That simply discloses your ignorance of nuclear physics Phylo....for as I'm sure you know, its radiological half-life is 30.07 years. If there had been an atomic explosion in the mid-1940s the Caesium-137 from THAT event would have completely decayed into inactivity and non-detection by the mid-1970s. It can ONLY have come from an event occuring SINCE 1975.
You do not understand the concept of radiological half life Phylo. If in a given sample of soil there was originally 100 grams of Caesium 137 in March 1945, then by April 1975 there would still be 50 grams left and in another 30.5 years (ie in Jan 2005) there would still be 25 grams left.
Not only that, but the Caesium 137 would also leave detectable decay products in the same sample, in this case Barium 137. The 2006 PTB report appears from the press release not to have made any investigation of the ratio of Caesium 137 to Barium 137 at Ohrdruf, does not disclose any findings of such a ratio and had the author investigated it, then it is certainly not a finding which the author would keep quiet, therefore you can’t claim anything Phylo = QED.
One more note, Caesium 137 an artificially created radionuclide has been detected in French wine since November 1944. Wine produced in the Thirties has no detectable Caesium. Successive vintages of wine also showed peaks of Caesium 137 matching Soviet and American nuclear tests of the 1950s/1960s plus also the Chernobyl disaster.
In November 1944 Captain Robert Blake collected a bottle of Rhöne Valley wine and sent it to Washington for analysis which returned positive for Caesium 137. This was nine months before the Trinity nuclear tests and eight years before the global spread of Caesium 137 by atmospheric thermonuclear testing.
Sources:
“The Mass of the Neutrino to the Dating of Wine,” scientific paper prepared by the Centre Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux Gradignan.
“The ALSOS Mission,” NY,1969. Pash, Boris T.
Incidentally you are also wrong about the half life of Caesium 137 because it is actually 30.17 years.
Failure to conduct Chronometry analysis
The PTB claim is unsupported because there were tests which those samples could have been subjected to like Caesium 135/137 ratio Chronometry to detect the age of Caesium laid down there, but these tests were not undertaken. Quite remarkably the PTB failed to perform the most obvious test able to resolve the question.
If it is true as you suggest Phylo, from your conversation with the report’s author that PTB withheld data from release to the public, then the overwhelming question has to be why would they?Lee et al. (1993) [5] first detected man-made environmental 135Cs in sedimentary
samples using a Finnigan MAT262-RPQI (TIMS) [6] and described the possible applications
of 137Cs/135Cs as a chronometer for the quantitative estimation of recent sedimentation and
erosion rates. For such a usage, the initial fallout ratio of 137Cs/135Cs is required to be
constant. According to nuclear physics studies, the fission yield for Caesium would remain
constant if the atmospheric nuclear tests were performed under similar conditions (e.g.,
neutron energy) and have common fission fuels. (Chen, Lee, Ku, & Das, 2008)
The concealment of information calls into question the whole validity of that report’s findings.
Who, or what benefits when vital information from a report commissioned to clarify a controversial topic is witheld?
Source:
“Production Ratio of Nuclear Fallout 137Cs/135Cs,” 2008, Hsin-Wei Chen, Typhoon Lee, Teh-Lung Ku, and J. P. Das.
Gamma Ray Activityby phylo_roadking on 14 Mar 2010, 06:01
The theses of the historian Karlsch did last year even the ZDF perk. Soil samples from the Ohrdruf military training, were therefore transferred to the PTB to investigate this to its contamination with radionuclides. For a nuclear explosion has taken place whenever they could even today be seen in view of the long half-lives of certain radionuclides still detected. A total of eight soil samples were investigated in the laboratories of the PTB according to the rules of mensuration.
Some radionuclides "betrayed" by a typical gamma radiation that occurs during the decay of atomic nuclei. The PTB scientists took therefore first the gamma spectra of the samples under the microscope. The result: All the measured specific activity (number of radioactive decays per unit time, based on the mass of the sample material) are small and mainly come from naturally occurring radionuclides.
Naturally from an almost 70 year old test blast the Gamma activity is low. Short lived radio-nuclides have all expired and longer lived ones are slow emitters. We are not told by the PTB author and are not able to learn from Dr Janssen’s report what total mass of radionuclide gamma emitters are present therefore PTB has withheld data preventing independent analysis.
What we can say however is this, the PTB press release for the 2006 report makes two mutually-exclusive and self contradictory claims:
(1) That the fall out present likely either came from Chernobyl, or Soviet era nuclear tests, and;
(2) That there was insufficient gamma activity to indicate a nuclear test at Ohrdruf.
You can say either one conclusion or the other, but not both.
Evidence to support one claim mutually excludes the possibility of the other. If there is evidence of Soviet era bomb tests, then it also follows there is definite evidence in Ohrdruf samples for 1945 bomb tests too, therefore the Gamma ray emissions data do not exclude a test at Ohrdruf at all.
What the PTB report is actually saying is there is evidence for a bomb test in the sample but the overall level of Gamma ray activity in the sample is quite low.
That is not inconsistent with an almost 70 year old, low yield nuclear explosion, as reported by witnesses in 1945.
It also suggests the PTB applied a scaling rule adopted since 2004 with their GESPECOR software which is applied to all samples across Germany to make results conform to the Europe wide mean average of all other samples (Wershofen & Arnold).
Gamma counting calculations from spectrometry analysis are made by PTB with a software package which automatically applies a scaling factor, which has an effect of subtracting the background activity of Soviet era tests(Wershofen & Arnold). This then distorts all readings by a process of minimising and downplaying results. PTB has not reported actual site data from any specific sampling since 2002.
Source:
“Radionuclides in Ground-level Air in Braunschweig –Report of the PTB Trace Survey Station from 1998 to 2003,” published 2005, Herbert Wershofen and Dirk Arnold.
Fission Track Analysis
With Fission Track analysis one can obtain the date of original fission from two or more fission products in the same decay chain to precisely date the original time of fission yet the PTB press release makes no mention of the PTB investigation attempting this simple but obvious technique.
In addition to the initial percentages of fission products being well known, so too are their decay half lives, therefore the rate of decay and also the rate at which that percentage reduces over time can be deduced if the total mass of radio-nuclides are known. By a process of backtracking their age of creation can be reverse calculated.
Both the presence of Uranium and of Cobolt 60 was also noted in samples by Karlsch, but we are not given their percentile presence, nor any further data by the Report’s author. Cobolt 60 is a fission product of Uranium therefore the report has either deliberately ignored analysing this valuable data or worse still suppressed the results from public knowledge because it conflicts with the personal views of the report writer.
Decay products from Plutonium fission explosions characteristically differ from those by Uranium but the paucity of data revealed prevents any independent analysis and just dumbs down the public.
It is particularly useful when Caesium 137 is present because the initial percentage of fission products from both Uranium and Plutonium fissions leading to Caesium are known and documented. If Caesium 137 is present at Ohrdruf then it is also likely that Strontium 89, Caesium 135 and Barium 137 were co-located there too since they are noted for not travelling far from a test site (Li, Bin) and from the ratio between these radio-nuclides the exact time of a test blast can be identified. Strontium 89 would no longer be detected at Ohrdruf because of its’ short 50.5 day half life, but its’ daughter isotope Yittrium 89 would be present in unusual abundance.
The greatest failure of the report apart from non disclosure of raw data from spectroscopy analysis is the equal failure not to compare samples from Ohrdruf with identical samples from ten and twenty kilometre radius to compare. For example if Yittrium 89 were relatively abundant at Ohrdruf but less so in the surrounding district, one could identify a test blast occurred at Ohrdruf.
If the PTB investigation of 2006 failed to even attempt such analysis then the report therefore is as about as worthless as toilet paper
Source:
Science and Global Security 1998, Li,Bin
Flawed PTB Analysis Methodology
At the Ohrdruf location you also need certainty in calculations with respect to certain other multipliers before you, or PTB can cite Gamma ray activity to rule out a test blast at the site.
You have to know the total mass of radio-nuclides in the sample because the total Alpha activity (natural decay) is divided by the number of Gamma emissions over time. The calculation formula also first requires input of the known yield from the original fission event which created fission products as a baseline before gamma activity can be cited to refute a test blast.
For this reason the PTB analysis falls at the first hurdle. For the formula to work at all, the original fission event must involve a nuclear weapon with only one common fission fuel (Chen, Lee, Ku, & Das). We know from patents by Schumann and Trinks that the Nazi Atomic weapons of 1944 and 1945 featured Deuteron boosted Uranium fission. The neutron yield from Deuterium in an Atomic explosion is 24 times greater than for Uranium leading to the almost total combustion of Uranium in such a bomb leaving little or no trace of the original Uranium except perhaps it’s fission products (Gsponer & Hurni )
That leaves you a little bit stumped Phylo, because the PTB by its’ own admission in the 2006 Press release acknowledged it could not differentiate the original fission event from Soviet era tests.
The largest error factor in calculating this type of analysis come from not knowing the original yield figure to input to a calculation. For example were one to assume that there was a nuclear explosion, but that the original bomb was caused by a critical mass, say 64kg of Uranium 235 (15kt), when in fact it might well have been a sub-critical warhead of just 57 grams Uranium (57g = 1kt yield, Li, Bin) then the multiplication factor would be so hugely erroneous as to give a false negative result.
If, in addition to a gross error in estimating the original yield the spectrometry data from the samples was arithmetically manipulated by GESPECOR software to match the mean average across Germany as was the practice of PTB in 2006, then two of the most important components in plotting the fissile track would have been impossibly incorrect.
Assuming for a moment the PTB did attempt a Fission Track analysis of Ohrdruf samples then they would have had to employ such a formula... then the question arises what original blast yield did they factor into their equation?
Was it the yield from a First Generation critical mass 64kg Uranium warhead?
The Nazis developed a more sophisticated Third Generation nuke as developed and tested from the Schumann Trinks patents between 1942 and 1944.
With a 57 gram fissile mass or similar, then GESPECOR software would not calculate results properly, nor recognise the possibility of a test blast, but would show a false negative with general evidence for fission products from Atomic test blasts which is precisely what the PTB press release of the 2006 Report alludes to.
These two computational errors would account for the mutually incompatible statements made in the 2006 PTB report press release. It would also account for the Report author’s reluctance to reveal the report itself because the data is so conflicted and self contradictory.
Methodology used by PTB with respect to Ohrdruf investigation report were so deeply flawed that in fact they are unable to tell us anything and the conclusions drawn by Dr Janssen therefore was simply highly subjective assumptions. His final remarks in the 2006 PTB press release leave the question entirely open and declines to issue a definitive finding against a 1945 test blast.
Now Phylo that you have added to the uncertainty of the 2006 PTB report by advising us from the report’s author Dr Janssen that he was unable to release the full report itself due to contractual obligations to ZDF to maintain confidentiality, then the value of anything the PTB report says is now thoroughly discredited.
The next question arises whether the analytical process itself disguises the result.
Caesium Readingsby phylo_roadking on 14 Mar 2010, 06:01
As an artificial radionuclide produced in the samples could ONLY be detected Cs 137th The nuclide is found for this activity, especially for the reactor accident at Chernobyl, it falls under the ground to be found everywhere in Germany contamination. Just Chernobyl has led in Germany to a large local variations of soil contamination with the radionuclide Cs-137. The load values vary greatly within Germany, depending on how much was Cs-137 leached by rain from the contaminated "Chernobyl" cloud.
The 2006 PTB report however does not mention discovering any Caesium 134 (or daughter isotopes) in samples from Ohrdruf which is inconsistent with the known fall-out activity from Chernobyl. At Aurach in Bavaria Caesium 134 fall out was found in far greater abundance on 30 April 1986. Caesium 134 was measured with a specific activity of 20,000 Bq/m2 versus just 600 Bq/m2 for Caesium 137.
There are indeed huge variations in soil samples of Caesium 137 all across Germany and precisely because of that PTB massages the numbers to average out all results. The PTB policy since 2004 has been not to comment upon, or release site specific data on highly localised variations in Caesium 137.
Usually 137Cs in Germany registers as 12% of γ-ray (Gamma) radio nuclides present, but Germany wide there are huge variations from 2% to 25% of samples, therefore since 2004 there has been a Europe wide agreement to average out these variations by applying a mathematical formula. This alone distorts the sample readings from Ohrdruf as we are not told the actual sample variation there nor the mathematical averaging formula which was used in the 2006 report.
PTB manipulates the 137Cs fall out figures from location to location to conform to a European mean average which reduces and thereby distorts the reading. I have been unable to find which details how much if any 137Cs was deposited in the forests at Ohrdruf in 1986 by the Chernobyl disaster and given the land there is heavily forested, serious questions arise whether sufficient 137Cs would actually reach the forest floor at all, rather than being absorbed by the trees?
Of course in March 1945 in an Atomic blast, deposition would be direct.
If soil samples taken from Ohrdruf were collected according to rules of mensuration then soil cores had a surface of 18 cm 2 and a depth of about 12 cm. Caesium does not penetrate undisturbed (ie: untilled soil) to any great depth. Caesium 137 distribution in undisturbed soil shows an exponential decrease with soil depth (Beck, 1966; Ritchie 1970).
Studies of Caesium deposition have proven that in undisturbed soil sediments Caesium laid down in 1946 ±5.9yrs would be found at a depth of 3cm and Caesium laid down in the early 1960s at 2cm deep, whilst Chernobyl Caesium sediments would be expected at 0.5cm deep. (Chen, Lee, Ku, & Das 2008). If PTB failed to record or publish the Caesium activity at relevant soil depths then their investigation was incompetently conducted.
Vegetation in particular dense forest like that overgrowing Ohrdruf can mask and absorb fall out. Winds carrying the fall out over Bavaria veered east after initial deposition over Germany and subsequent deposition occurred over Poland and Sweden. I can find no record of fall out over Thuringa in the available literature.
It is not at all open to assumption that Caesium 137 at Ohrdruf was deposited by Chernobyl fall out because it is the combination of rain and not just wind alone which deposited Chernobyl fall out. Whilst a radioactive plume may have blown over Ohrdruf without the further action of rain to deposit that fall out it may have entirely avoided Ohrdruf.
The 2006 PTB report apparently failed to take investigative steps to clarify the original age of Caesium found at Ohrdruf as defined by the depth located in the soil samples and that was an obvious investigative flaw.
There are 14 trace survey stations to monitor radioactive fall-out across Germany. Readings obtained are subject to wide statistical variations called “uncertainties”. According to the convention between the German trace survey stations, it is the arithmetic mean of the uncertainties of the particular data set which is reported and not the uncertainty of the mean value calculation.
For example between 1998 to 2003 mean weekly variation of radio nuclides in Germany were:
7Be(Beryllium)= 2%-12%
22Na(Sodium)= 5%-38%
40K(Potassium)=3%-18%
210Pb(Lead)=2%-13%
137Cs(Caesium)=2%-25%
...but PTB averages these readings to conform to a Europe wide model, not to tell the site specific truth. Therefore when PTB said readings give no indication distinguishing Caesium at Ohrdruf from post war sources it was actively misleading the reader. What the PTB should have said was that it undertook no analysis capable of distinguishing Caesium at Ohrdruf from post war sources.
Source
“Radionuclides in Ground-level Air in Braunschweig –Report of the PTB Trace Survey Station from 1998 to 2003,” published 2005, Herbert Wershofen and Dirk Arnold.
“Environmental Behaviour of Radionuclides deposited after the Reactor Accident of Chernobyl and related exposures.” 1993, Jacob, Miiller, Pröhl, Voigt, Berg, Paretzke, Regulla
Plutonium Readings
To demonstrate the massaging and manipulation of data by PTB at other sites in Germany unexplained surprisingly high levels of Plutonium were mathematically averaged out to make it appear that at those specific sites that the mean average γ-ray (Gamma) radio nuclides figure of was much lower. If the raw data for Ohrdruf was with held by PTB and ZDF how can we know whether PTB manipulated and dumbed down just like Plutonium readings across Germany?
In the case of Plutonium analysis Germany wide the elative statistical uncertainties of the a-particle spectrometric measurements are in the range of 10%-84% (238Pu) and 8%-10% (239Pu)
It does not follow automatically that any Uranium, or Caesium found at Ohrdruf came from Chernobyl. That assumption cannot be made in a scientific report which fails to ask the appropriate scientific questions and manipulates data.
Misleading Attributions in other PTB reports
An example of similar misleading claims was analysis of Plutonium fall-out at Garching where Chernobyl fall-out was blamed in 1990 for Leukemia deaths amongst children, yet later independent research subsequently proved the real cause were synthetic Titanium coated microsphere beads of Plutonium, Americium, Curium and Thorium released by a fire in September 1986 at the GKSS Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik ASTERIX laboratory.
At Garching the nuclear scientific community responsible for causing deaths to these innocent children in 1990 took it upon itself to lie to the public to cover up the incident and protect the jobs of fellow scientists. Without proper analysis a report can conclude anything it wishes without risk of being challenged by hiding behind the author’s scientific authority, but that is a false and misleading abuse of authority to create deception. Such reports rely upon the scientific naivety of the audience to get away with making unsupported subjective denials.
In the case of the 2006 PTB Report about Ohrdruf the same deceptive process has occurred if the report’s methodology and raw data was with-held from us.
There was no accurate data collected during the Chernobyl disaster because there was at that time no network of sampling stations across Germany. Equally nobody is able to say definitively what fall-out came from where or when, because there was no pre Chernobyl baseline data to compare it with.
Some areas of Europe over which the Chernobyl radioactive plume travelled were not deposited with fall out at all. Deposition of Caesium 137 fall out is strongly determined by rainfall (Davis 1963).
It does not follow that because Chernobyl fall out was deposited in southern Germany that it was also deposited in Thuringia along the border with the Czech republic. A more recent case in which radioactive fall-out failed to cross the Sudeten mountains challenges that assumption.
Following accidental release from Hungary’s PAKS nuclear power plant 4 October 2003, Iodine 131 fall-out crossed Austria and southern Poland, but did not cross mountains into Germany and no German trace survey station could detect that fall-out event. Chernobyl fall out was known to have deposited across Bavaria mainly due to wet deposition, but I can find no clear claims that it fell over Thuringia. It can not merely just be assumed Phylo, but I welcome you providing us with any accurate scientific data proving otherwise?
Had you not revealed your email exchange to us with the report’s author Phylo we would all still be unaware that the PTB refused to release the report, their methodology, or its’ data. Your disclosure has done us a great service in discrediting the report which you relied upon to discredit the 1945 test blasts.
I would just like to thank you again Phylo for drawing to our attention how flawed and unreliable the 2006 PTB report actually is.
Merely euphemisms.
