In the field of environmental remediation, a recent development has garnered attention: the reported reduction of radiation levels in the Chernobyl exclusion zone by nearly half, attributed to a new technology developed by the Swiss company Exlterra. Their Nucleus Separation Passive System (NSPS) is claimed to have achieved a 46% decrease in airborne radiation and a 37% reduction in soil radioactivity within a one-hectare test area over a 12-month period .
The NSPS operates through a network of approximately 5,000 polyethylene tubes installed underground at varying depths. These tubes are designed to harness natural forces, such as gravity, to accelerate the decay of radioactive particles without the use of chemicals or soil excavation .
According to Exlterra, the technology utilizes high-velocity particles, known as positrons, to target and break down radioactive isotopes like cesium-137, strontium-90, and americium-241. This process is conducted beneath the soil surface, purportedly without releasing additional radioactivity into the environment .
The Ukrainian State Specialized Enterprise Ecocentre (SSE Ecocentre), responsible for radiation monitoring in the exclusion zone, has collaborated with Exlterra on this project. Sergiy Kireiev, General Director of SSE Ecocentre, remarked on the significance of the results, stating,
“These results are remarkable. It is the first time in 35 years that such technology has succeeded in reducing the level of radioactivity in the soil and air so significantly” .
https://www.exlterra.com/post/accelerating-chernobyl-s-decontamination-with-exlterra-s-nsps-technology
Exlterra projects that the test site could reach natural background radiation levels within five years, a substantial reduction from the estimated 24,000 years required for natural decay without intervention .
While these findings are promising, it’s important to approach them with cautious optimism. The technology’s efficacy has been demonstrated on a limited scale, and further research and studies are necessary to validate these results and assess the feasibility of scaling up the approach for broader application.
In summary, Exlterra’s NSPS presents an innovative approach to addressing radioactive contamination, with initial results indicating significant reductions in radiation levels within the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Continued investigation and validation will determine the potential of this technology to contribute meaningfully to environmental remediation efforts.
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This sounds like pure unaldulterated male bovine excrement to me. For most forms of radioactive decay, no low energy physical process can change the decay rate.
It has all the earmarks of such. Their website explains nothing. https://www.exlterra.com/nsps-how-it-works
Yes. Natural forces such as gravity….
The NSPS operates through a network of approximately 5,000 polyethylene tubes installed underground at varying depths. These tubes are designed to harness natural forces, such as gravity, to accelerate the decay of radioactive particles without the use of chemicals or soil excavation .
And among these natural forces seem to be positrons….
What, you may wonder, is a positron?
“Positrons are the antiparticles of electrons, with the same mass and spin but a positive charge. They’re produced in processes like beta-plus decay, where a proton in a radioactive nucleus transforms into a neutron, emitting a positron and a neutrino. High-energy interactions, such as cosmic rays hitting Earth’s atmosphere or particle accelerator experiments, also create positrons.”
From the usual source.
We get these positrons from some natural source, and then do something unspecified with them in these thousands of polythene tubes, and the result is a miracle. Closely resembling horse manure.
So decay of the radiation can create a means of absorbing more? Interesting.
(Of course not all types of radiation are much harm to humans.)
BTW, I read that dogs near Chernobyl are slowly mutating.
And that the big risk is losing control of the active reactors the ignorant Russian military naively captured. Brave Ukrainian operators stayed on the job, eventually Russia agreed to let them rotate through a nearby town on shifts. But electrical power is needed, Russia keeps trying to put Ukraine into darkness.
I recall that is the nuclear power plant that is trialling a way to re-use spent fuel rods.
Yup. Exactly.
I had to check my calendar to make sure it isn’t April 1.
‘male’? Ask a dairy farmer about cow pies in fields and barns.
“Cut by 47%” – the term “half life” comes to mind.Would radiation have dropped a similar amount if they did nothing?
Yup. The half-life of Ce-137 is 30.4 years.
It would have credibility if they claimed 97%.
Everything in climate change claims is 97%.
To Frank from NoVA
You mean Cs-137, Cesium.
Ce-137, Cerium, has a half-life of about 9 hours.
Yes, thanks!
The Exlterra site is uninformative.
OTOH, the half life of Cesium 137 is 30 years, and Strontium 90 is 29 years. So unless the Ukrainians themselves are sadly mistaken about their soil measurements, somehow radioactive soil remediation is going on—they say 37% in 12 months. And a one hectare plot is big enough to be a valid experiment.
The inventor, Andrew Niemczyk, is a Polish polymath. HQ in Switzerland, operations in US. Privately held, so no apparent motivation to boost stock.
This is nonsense and is nothing more than a scam. There is no known physical process that can change the rate of radioactive decay. And “natural forces such as gravity” certainly don’t do anything.
Looking at the video the results claim to be from 2021, while the press releases was in 2024. Now if I had a novel process that worked and had solid reliable evidence that it did and if that process demonstrated a new law of physics I would publish it, win a nobel prize in physics and make lots of money. Instead these guys decided to sit on the results for two years then alert the world via a bunch of dubious websites while selling the right to others to install the plastic tubes.
Yep.
They should have employed the marketing flogs from the windmills and solar panels power industries.
Because these marketers have clocked up an impressive amount of sales of snake-oil over these past 3 decades.
And they too were selling what they were claiming was (as you described it) –
“a novel process that worked and had solid reliable evidence that it did”
For electron capture by the nucleus, pressure can have a very slight effect. For other decay modes, nope.
Ageed.
It’s too bad you can’t see through the climate change scam just as easily.
How many hectares need to be treated? 🤔
This is utter nonsense: “These tubes are designed to harness natural forces, such as gravity, to accelerate the decay of radioactive particles without the use of chemicals or soil excavation”
Is magic is used to insert the “tubes” underground? Maybe the principle could be used by gravediggers, who could insert coffins beneath the ground without the need for messy excavation, and the resultant disturbance to the natural surface.
I see a wide variety of uses, from creating underground carparks, cellars, mass transit tunnels and so on. The principle could be applied to mining – no more open cuts, just extract the minerals through “tubes”!
Where can I invest?
You forgot about the addition of pixie dust to aid the process.
Kind of a red flag: the word ‘airborn’. How much airborne radioactivity could there be 38 years after the event?
One also has to consider average natural amounts of radioactivity..
“air·borne /ˈerˌbôrn/
adjective
transported by air.”
Technically no radiation is ever transported by air, radiation traveling at light speed, and air traveling at wind speed.
My least favorite thing to hear in from a newsreader (usually in the same paragraph where they pronounce “nuclear” as “new-cue-ler”) is the phrase “radiation cloud”. No radiation is ever in a cloud. radioactive material like dust can be in a cloud but radiation the is gone.
“(usually in the same paragraph where they pronounce “nuclear” as “new-cue-ler”)”
It’s even worse when a so-called nuclear expert can’t pronounce the word.
Going Nucular
Sounds like my kind of book. It will be fun to reexamine a 2005 perspective.
“The words that echo through Geoffrey Nunberg’s brilliant new journey across the landscape of American language evoke exactly the tenor of our times. Nunberg has a wonderful ear for the new, the comic and the absurd. He pronounces that: “‘Blog’ is a syllable whose time has come,” and that “You don’t get to be a verb unless you’re doing something right,” with which he launches into the effect of Google on our collective consciousness. Nunberg hears the shifting use of “Gallic” as we suddenly find ourselves in bitter opposition to the French; perhaps only Nunberg could compare America the Beautiful with a Syrian national anthem that contains the line “A land resplendent with brilliant suns…almost like a sky centipede.”
P.T. Barnum has met his match.
So many cynics! This is going on under the auspices of the most transparent, corruption-free government on earth—Ukraine.
There must be a foreign aid bid in there somewhere with plentiful kickbacks.
You need to add a /sarc tag.
SMC – no he didn’t. It was clear enough without it…. Made me laugh, anyway.
Clearly they are paying Zelensky, otherwise it would not be happening.
Zelensky elected 2019… during Trump 1… I wonder how long he’ll try to hold on.
And how did the then current government of Ukraine find itself is such dire straights a comedian “won” it’s Presidential election? Which key figures were ousted and how did that go down? And who presided over Putin taking Crimea? Who pushed Ukraine to give up its strategic weapons and sign a deal that EU and America would defend them from Russian aggression?
Improper comment.
Yes, stating the truth is always improper to leftards.
Certainly Ukraine has little corruption today, don’t confuse it with Russia.
Ukrainian scientists should know radioactivity, they’ve been dealing with the Chernobyl mess for a long time. They know how to operate nuclear reactors, have several in operation.
Dang it. I forgot to put on my hip boots before reading this article. Bovine scat doesn’t even begin to cover it. I’m not sure if codswallop wrapped in bovine scat and distributed by horse feathers can adequately describe the absurdity.
FWIW, the half-life of Pu-239 is about 24k years. If I remember correctly, Chernobyl doesn’t/didn’t use Pu-239 as fuel.
At the time of the accident, the primary fissile inventory was indeed 239Pu. 239Pu has a lower delayed neutron fraction than 235U (~0.2% vs 0.65%), which made it easier for the reactor to go supercritical on prompt neutrons alone. Without delayed neutrons, reactor control would resemble the situation in Heinlein’s short story Blowups Happen – which was an amazingly good portrayal of a nuclear power plant considering the story was first published in 1941. One example was Heinlein was only a factor of two high stating the explosive yield of instantly fissioning 2.5 tons of 235U.
The “24k” years was a tip-off for me as well.
Good news, I wish them success.
Who could possibly doubt –
No doubt this is due to the amazing properties of CO2. As well as trapping and accumulating heat, which then gets hidden, never to be seen again, it is well known that CO2 also traps and accumulates upwelling and downwelling (in addition to sidewelling) ultrared radiation, thereby accelerating the reduction in pollution resulting from nucleonic energy level absorption and emission. Due to a combination of positive and negative feedbacks occurring at a subsurface emission level of 0.05 per joule^3, Thiebold’s Theorem tells us that the resultant vectors asymptotically increase to zero.
Only a climate scientist with 40 years of specialised expertise can really understand the implications of this cutting edge technology.
It’s definitely beyond me.
Charles,
As a scientist who worked extensively with nuclear radiation, including private ownership of a fast neutron generator, I state with confidence that there is no known process to affect the decay rate of radioactive isotopes, except by high-energy processes like fission and fusion for a few isotopes with particular properties like uranium, thorium, plutonium.
If the claimed research was valid, the scientific community would have noted it as a major, significant advancement of scientific understanding. It has not. Geoff S
It’s homeopathy. Do nothing and 80% of afflictions disappear on their own, courtesy of half a billion years of evolution of the vertebrate immune system. For the other 20% you better go to a real hospital. To make the homeopath look important he or she will follow a time honoured ritual with small talk and pills and possibly other paraphernalia.
Cerium 137 is the largest constituent of the radioactive fallout. Its half life is about 35 years. Thus, by doing absolutely nothing you will find dat after 40 to 50 years the radioactivity of the environment has decreased to about half of what it was on day 1. The pipes and press release are just the tools of the witchdoctor.
The reactivity of the remnants of the core itself is a different story. Many of the radioactive nucleotides in the core have a much longer half life. That containment building will have to be there for many years, or until the remnant has been broken up with the debris piecemeal wise moved to longterm storage.
Sorry Cesium 137. Bl..y spellcheckers.
How big a kickback is Zelensky getting for this crap? DJT has shutdown the Infinite Gravy Train with Biscuit Wheels so he has got to find some places else to steal money from.
you Hotel9 are talking rabid sh…te.
Zelenski is doing all he can to defend his country from some loony in Moscow..
“I don’t need a taxi I need bullets” – well said and then nutter Putler couldn’t even manage to get into Kiev despite being the so called greatest army in the world
haha!
Putler was even so sh..t scared of his cook, most of his great elite were jumping into private planes to leave MSK!
While these findings are promising, it’s important to approach them with cautious optimism.
Agreed.
I’ve read the comments and know a little of the topic, but reserve my opinion, which is doubtful.
However, it is an experiment in the field, which is much better than anything the Climate Syndicate does.
It is also possible the explanation is wrong and there is something else happening that is not yet identified and therefore not understood. For example, the radioactivity in the soil may be not neutralized, but rather repositioned in those tubes. Speculation only. Not even a good guess, but there are always possibilities.
Before we shut it down, give it a chance. See what is published (if anything) and evaluate the data, not the approach defined in a new article.
It is always wise to be skeptical and that means being open to possibilities not yet understood.
They don’t get it – the ray-duy-yay-shunn scare story needs to be perpetuated.
This is to keep the Chernobyl region the wonderful pristine nature park that it now is for humans and wildlife alike.
Keep away the masses with the death ray scare.
None of this nonsense about remediation and safe levels.
“There’s no safe level of ray-duy-yay-shunn, a single neutrino can kill you!!!”
Boron infused polyethylene will cut the radiation.
Corrected . . . will possibly provide a minor reduction in external radiation from the internal radioactive water, but will NOT reduce the degree of radioactivity or the attendant decay rate of such.
“These tubes are designed to harness natural forces, such as gravity, to accelerate the decay of radioactive particles without the use of chemicals or soil excavation .
According to Exlterra, the technology utilizes high-velocity particles, known as positrons, to target and break down radioactive isotopes like cesium-137, strontium-90, and americium-241.”
The above article, and associated claims for a “remarkable” and “innovative” approach to accelerating the decay of radioactive elements is . . . ummm . . . over-hyped.
First, the use of gravity to concentrate materials present in the natural environment has been utilized over many centuries. In particular, look into mining technology.
Second, the transmutation of radioactive elements by bombardment of selective particles (BTW, not at all a “natural force”) has been in practice since the use of the earliest particle accelerators. From Google’s AI bot:
“The first transmutation of a radioactive element using a particle accelerator was achieved in 1932 by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton. They used a particle accelerator to bombard lithium-7 with accelerated protons, resulting in the transmutation of lithium-7 into two alpha particles (helium-4).”
As to the expense of using a positron source/generator to treat radioactive soil/water at Chernobyl: YIKES!
But the above article is good feed for the gullible.
Two people died as a direct result of the accident.
Any who died after that was the result of disregard for human life.
Of course that is a given, Building a reactor designed to make weapon grade material without a containment building near population centers is something the USSR did.
You know something is BS when they tell you the dose rate compared to a regulatory limit.
So:
Decoding the Nucleus Separation Passive System (NSPS): A scientific perspective on soil decontamination but can’t even get links correct.
Not well described.
Supposedly the tubes are vertical, and of detailed cross-section: How it works: Exlterra Nucleus Separation Passive System.
https://www.swiss.tech/news/swiss-start-helps-decontaminate-chernobyl says 5,000 tubes in one hectare which is 10,000 sq metres, thus 2 sq metres per tube thus 1.44 metres average between tubes.
That’s dense.
(From tip of finger of outstretched arm to nose is roughly one yard or one metre close enough.)