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Cosmic Rays May Reveal Damage to Fukushima’s Nuclear Reactors

Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Contributor   |   August 20, 2013

http://www.livescience.com/39022-cosmic-rays-may-reveal-fukushima-damage.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29

High-energy particles called muons created by cosmic rays striking the Earth’s atmosphere could provide an X-ray-style image of the damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after the 2011 tsunami-related meltdown in Japan.
Credit: NSF/J. Yang

Radiation is still leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after the 2011 tsunami-related meltdown in Japan, making any damage assessment dangerous for both humans and machines. Instead, high-energy particles created by cosmic rays striking the Earth’s atmosphere could provide an X-ray-style image of the damage from a much safer distance.

Technology capable of harnessing the high-energy muon particles comes from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. Shortly after 9/11, the U.S. lab developed a muon detector that could spot uranium or plutonium nuclear weapons hidden inside cargo containers by tracking the changed paths of ghostly muons as they traveled through the nuclear materials.

Now the Los Alamos team is working with Japanese officials to apply the same idea to look inside the damaged Fukushima plant. [Radioactive Water Leaks from Fukushima: What We Know]

August 20, 2013 - Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized