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Page added on September 9, 2016
Peak Radiation: Scientists Hope To Calculate Nuclear Fuel Left Inside Earth By 2025
By 1992, environmental activist Jeremy Rifkin claimed, we would achieve Peak Oil. Fossil fuels would begin to decline. Rifkin was just going by an environmental press release but Peak Oil had a long history; almost as long as oil itself.
In 1919, the chief geologist of the United States Geological Survey, said Peak Oil would happen within 3 years, while King Hubbert of Shell Oil predicted in 1956 that Peak Oil would happen by 1971. So by 1992 those claims were only working with a new generation of people who didn’t understand science. In reality, math models containing all those variables are unlikely to be right.
A new team says they may have done it with Earth’s internal juice; the primordial energy from assembling the planet and nuclear energy from the heat produced during natural radioactive decay. The study by scientists from the University of Maryland, Charles University in Prague and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Scientific Reports, hopes to use antineutrino events.
To calculate the amount of fuel inside Earth by 2025, the researchers will rely on detecting some of the tiniest subatomic particles known to science — geoneutrinos. These antineutrino particles are byproducts of nuclear reactions within stars (including our sun), supernovae, black holes and human-made nuclear reactors. They also result from radioactive decay processes deep within the Earth.
Detecting antineutrinos requires a huge detector the size of a small office building, housed about a mile underground to shield it from cosmic rays that could yield false positive results. Inside the detector, scientists detect antineutrinos when they crash into a hydrogen atom. The collision produces two characteristic light flashes that unequivocally announce the event. The number of events scientists detect relates directly to the number of atoms of uranium and thorium inside the Earth. And the decay of these elements, along with potassium, fuels the vast majority of the heat in the Earth’s interior.
To date, detecting antineutrinos has been painfully slow, with scientists recording only about 16 events per year from the underground detectors KamLAND in Japan and Borexino in Italy. However, researchers predict that three new detectors expected to come online by 2022–the SNO+ detector in Canada and the Jinping and JUNO detectors in China–will add 520 more events per year to the data stream.
The new Jinping detector, which will be buried under the slopes of the Himalayas, will be four times bigger than existing detectors. The underground JUNO detector near the coast of southern China will be 20 times bigger than existing detectors.
“I am one of those scientists who has created a compositional model of the Earth and predicted the amount of fuel inside Earth today,” said one of the study’s authors William McDonough, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland. “We’re in a field of guesses. At this point in my career, I don’t care if I’m right or wrong, I just want to know the answer.”
9 Comments on "Peak Radiation: Scientists Hope To Calculate Nuclear Fuel Left Inside Earth By 2025"
Go Speed Racer on Fri, 9th Sep 2016 1:59 pm
Welfare bums.
rockman on Fri, 9th Sep 2016 2:46 pm
First: “…King Hubbert of Shell Oil predicted in 1956 that Peak Oil would happen by 1971.” Which, in FACT, has still been proven correct even though we almost set a new US PO date recently.
Second: “I am one of those scientists who has created a compositional model of the Earth and predicted the amount of fuel inside Earth today”. Once you know how much “nuclead fuel” is left within the earth exactly will you do with that information? Obviously this has nothing to do with extractable nuclear material so the use of “fuel” is a tad misleading since the “fuel” refered to is the natural decay of the material that originally formed the earth. Other then some insignificant additions from meteors and comets that have impacted the planet the date of peak decay of radioactive elements is easy: it was about 4.5 billion years when they estimate material coalesced to form the earth.
Not my area but what I understand is the primary goal is to detect those mysterious particles that are wondering around the universes. Perhaps to understand dark matter and dark energy as well as learn more about the nature of gravity.
Gravity which has nothing to do with objects falling from high places to low places and everything to do with understanding why masses are drawn towards each other. We know the attractive force of gravity exists but really have no idea why. Just as we know magnetic attraction forces exist and can easy block it from acting on two objects. And yet have no clue as to how to block the gravity force between two masses. That is truly the Holy Grail in the minds of most physicists.
PracticalMaina on Fri, 9th Sep 2016 3:01 pm
Plenty of radon and uranium left in my state, hell theres probably plenty of ionizing energy in that left over frack water…
Sissyfuss on Fri, 9th Sep 2016 5:13 pm
In tandem with cold fusion production, we will be harvesting dark energy within the next ten years. All this crap will be to cheap to matter, erh, I meant meter.
makati1 on Fri, 9th Sep 2016 8:11 pm
Scientists will be selling pencils on the street corner after the SHTF. All the surplus energy that supports unnecessary careers will melt away and maybe a half billion people will be out of a job and no unemployment. Payback is a bitch.
theedrich on Sat, 10th Sep 2016 3:33 am
Thu 8/9/2016: New N. Korean nuke test. (It was still Wednesday in the U.S.). This, the biggest one yet. Maybe an H-nuke is not far off. Meanwhile, the ØBillary axis is doing its best to keep the citizenry asleep so that it will elect the Demonic Party yet again.
This test is only one small sign of the non-stop loading of the global powder keg. The myth of the valiant American “warrior” continues apace, however, for historico-political reasons. This fantasy is kept alive despite the fact that, nowadays, only increasingly sophisticated technology of all types, not Hollywood heroes, hellions or Hillary-like Harpies, determines superiority in war. In World War II, America showed the rest of mankind how to annihilate vast numbers of innocent civilians with technoweapons that were primitive by today’s standards. Mass murder of populations deemed “evil” is the core martial value of the U.S. elites.
But the rest of the world has taken note, even if the American masses have subsided into a coma.
The North Korean test is only one small sign of the slow intensification of hatred toward the sadistic whackos ruling Yankeeland. With the Demonic madwoman now approaching coronation in the DC asylum, this intensification is accelerating. At the same time, the psychotics in charge of our military continue to bungle even the most elementary operations. On virtually the same day that Kim Jong-un exploded his test device, the U.S. had a bunch of SEAL team soldiers prepared to rescue a couple of professors (one American, one Australian) captured by Al-Qaeda in Kabul, Afghanistan. However, as in Benghazi, the enthroned Negro decided to wait a day before letting the men attack the suspected kidnappers. That 24 hours gave the latter the time necessary to escape with their prey, so that the SEAL team failed in the main purpose of its mission. In other words, the world was given another display of American incompetence and deranged leadership against even very primitive enemies.
American politicians like to think that the rest of the world wants American ideals, when in fact it only wants American riches and materialism. The underlying oedipalism of the U.S. is not shared by the rest of our species. And Washington’s attempt to dominate the rest of the world only results in blowback everywhere: in Allahland, in Russia, in east Asia.
Tension is growing globally as humanity nears the absolute limits of growth, despite of all the happy talk. The failure of the ØBillary megalomaniacs to recognize this, and their intention to persist in the current psychosis of sob-story-based domestic tyranny and belligerent foreign aggression and bribery is leading the world to its death.
tk on Sat, 10th Sep 2016 12:27 pm
We haven’t seen “peak radiation”, yet.
I bet we all will be dead before “peak radiation” is around.
Breaking global supply lines, chaos…
Yeah, keep trying nuclear reactors and spent fuel ponds maintained and cooled for 4+ years without a electricity grid, replacements and staff.
Meet our successor, likely also one of our predecessors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermococcus_gammatolerans
peakyeast on Sat, 10th Sep 2016 4:10 pm
Seems like a colossal waste of resources to do something that is not likely to return anyhing of real value.
Oh well… I suppose they dont have anything better to do than to get rid of all those excess resources and time they have on their hands. Poor dudes.
In a world where “civilisation” appreciated the current position of the entire ecosystem, the resource base they would be shot on sight for their stupidity.
John on Sat, 10th Sep 2016 6:37 pm
I’m starting to think we all haven’t a clue about the amount of energy on earth what so ever…
Putting a price on finding energy is totally redicidilious….if u can print free bank money u can print free money to find energy…simple!
Something says there is something down the line that no one ever thought possible….the same story of life to date….we haven’t a clue eats ahead!!!