Radioactive tritium from Fukushima found near the Southern Kuril Islands
Laboratory analyses of the first water samples obtained during the expedition of the research vessel Akademik Oparin showed elevated tritium levels in the main branch of the Kuroshio Current, which was to be expected based on the current pattern in the region, as well as elevated tritium levels in the area of the South Kuril Islands. Therefore, the goal of the new expedition is a more thorough study of the waters of the Kuril Islands and the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk, which is the most important fishing zone in Russia, the press service of the V. I. Ilychev Pacific Oceanological Institute (TOI) of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences told TASS.
Heavy hydrogen used in nuclear energy and water turned out to be older than Earth
In protoplanetary disks, water is virtually omnipresent. Recent studies of the water content of early planetary systems like ours show that water is an abundant and ubiquitous molecule, originally synthesized on the surface of tiny grains of interstellar dust by hydrogenation of frozen oxygen, reports the journal Elements. In the molecular cloud from which a new planetary system will emerge, oxygen attaches and freezes to the dust grains it encounters. Once a hydrogen molecule intersects with this frozen oxygen, water ice is formed.