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Fukushima's Nuclear Signature Found In California Wine (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Is it possible to see the effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in California wines produced at the time? Today we get an answer, thanks to a study carried out by french pharmacologist Philippe Hubert and a couple of colleagues. "In January 2017, we came across a series of Californian wines (Cabernet Sauvignon) from vintage 2009 to 2012," say Hubert and company. This set of wines provides the perfect test. The Fukushima disaster occurred on March 11, 2011. Any wine made before that date should be free of the effects, while any dating from afterward could show them. The team began their study with the conventional measurement of cesium-137 levels in the unopened bottles. That showed levels to be indistinguishable from background noise.
But the team was able to carry out more-sensitive tests by opening the wine and reducing it to ash by evaporation. This involves heating the wine to 100 degrees Celsius for one hour and then increasing the temperature to 500 degrees Celsius for eight hours. In this way, a standard 750-milliliter bottle of wine produces around four grams of ashes. The ashes were then placed in a gamma ray detector to look for signs of cesium-137. Using this method, Hubert and his colleagues found measurable amounts of cesium-137 above background levels in the wine produced after 2011. "It seems there is an increase in activity in 2011 by a factor of two," conclude the team.
But the team was able to carry out more-sensitive tests by opening the wine and reducing it to ash by evaporation. This involves heating the wine to 100 degrees Celsius for one hour and then increasing the temperature to 500 degrees Celsius for eight hours. In this way, a standard 750-milliliter bottle of wine produces around four grams of ashes. The ashes were then placed in a gamma ray detector to look for signs of cesium-137. Using this method, Hubert and his colleagues found measurable amounts of cesium-137 above background levels in the wine produced after 2011. "It seems there is an increase in activity in 2011 by a factor of two," conclude the team.
You have proven we can detect previously unmeasurably small amounts of radiation. Seriouslly? You had to boil down an entire bottle of wine to 4 grams of solids, then put that into the core of a gamma ray detector, just so you can determine that instead of one atom of Cesium-137, there were two.
Talk about over-hyped headlines. The only important sentence is, "[They] showed levels to be indistinguishable from background noise."
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"It seems there is an increase in activity in 2011 by a factor of two," conclude the team.
No...
The team began their study with the conventional measurement of cesium-137 levels in the unopened bottles. That showed levels to be indistinguishable from background noise.
What I conclude is that this testing method, removing the 99.5% water mass, simply makes it possible to detect otherwise undetectable amounts of cesium-137.
Sounds more like a French "researcher" wants to scare people off California wine so they will buy more French wine. OMG! DOUBLE the radiation as before! And if that "double dose" of radioactivity is still 4 orders of magnitude less than, say, standing out in direct sunlight, then it's a bit dishonest to publish this "conclusion" and pretend it's very significant.
The only real use of this research beyond curiosity is authenticating wine (but only if there's enough that destroying a liter of it is worthwhile). Fukushima created a barely detectable bump compared to the few years before the incident.
Looking at the graphs in the actual paper, The signature isn't really even visible compared to the spikes after the '50s nuclear tests.