Inspired by similar tests conducted in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster , the French team decided to analyze the California wines for traces of radioactive particles, specifically cesium, a man-made isotope. Their findings, newly published in the pre-print online journal Arxiv , suggest that currents and atmospheric patterns carried radioactive particles across the Pacific, where they settled on grapevines growing in California's wine regions. The team writes that bottles produced following the nuclear meltdown contain increased levels of cesium, with the cabernet revealing double the amount of pre-Fukushima radiation. This method, which allows researchers to conduct tests on unopened bottles, is a key tool in detecting wine fraud, or the mislabeling of newer wines in order to inflate their prices. After failing to detect cesium in the unopened bottles, the physicists vaporized the wine.
Radioactive Isotopes in California Wines? Don't Panic
Honduras finds radioactive material in container | Reuters
This is a short note about a few measurements done at the PRISNA facility in Bordeaux, France, where the method of dating wine without opening the bottle was initially developed. Because of the Covid pandemic, the ceremony will again be entirely online. There will be a special livestream in Japanese on the Nico Nico network. There might also be a special livestream in Spanish that's not definite yet, but we are hopeful. Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners will be introduced. A new mini-opera, called "A Bridge Between People", amplifies that theme. Sumetsky, Optics Letters, vol.
Fukushima reactors lend exotic nuclear finish to California's wines
A shorter version of this article is published by the Financial Times. Looking for a bottle to give as a present? Those carrying significant years, ideally birth years, can be just the job. But the trouble is that if wines are to have the same age as the recipient, they tend to be expensive.
Caesium 55 Cs , cesium US , [7] or radiocaesium , is a radioactive isotope of caesium that is formed as one of the more common fission products by the nuclear fission of uranium and other fissionable isotopes in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Trace quantities also originate from spontaneous fission of uranium It is among the most problematic of the short-to-medium-lifetime fission products.