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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

This is a primer on the way the wind has been blowing since the Ukrainian ammunition  stockpile was blown up at Khmelnitsky in the early hours of May 13.

Radiation measurements in the western Ukrainian city appear to have risen sharply on May 13 and 14, indicating that British-supplied depleted uranium shells for anti-tank warfare had been detonated. The radiation-level spiking caused by the release of the depleted uranium (DU) has been denied by Ukrainian officials.  

US media reported on May 15 that “while not all of the facts and information about the multiple strikes on Western regions of Ukraine have been fully established, there are several elements to the viral conspiracy narrative that are provably false, misleading or lack evidence.”  “While Newsweek could not rule out the possibility that the ‘depleted uranium’ shells provided by the U.K. had been stored there, past reports about the nature of these munitions put a big question mark over that claim.”

Newsweek endorsed Ukrainian government agency claims. “Energoatom, the National Nuclear Power Company of Ukraine, said in its official Telegram channel that ‘the radiation level at the industrial site [in Khmelnitsky] and in the surrounding regions is at a level corresponding to the normal operation of power units and does not exceed natural background values.’”

A statement by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeated the Ukrainian government claim without publishing independent radiation measurements of its own. The IAEA was reported by Newsweek as having “poured cold water over the claims. “The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency today that there have been no measurements of elevated levels of gamma radiation in the country’s western regions in recent days,” a representative of the international body told Newsweek in an email.”  

Social media from the region have indicated a rapid exodus of the population in the vicinity of the blast.  Anti-radiation measures have been introduced for the residents of the Ternopol region, which neighbours Khmelnitsky to the west.  

The wind has been blowing northwest into Poland since, and raining. The Polish state Atomic Energy Agency (PAA) has been reporting radiation-level spiking since May 15. The highest measurements have been reported at Lublin and Krakow in the south, and then Gydnia, a port on Poland’s north coast.

On May 19 in Moscow, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Security Council, said the “elimination [of the Khmelnitsky stockpile] has caused a radioactive cloud that is now moving towards Western Europe. An increase in radiation levels has already been registered in Poland.”   Patrushev was repeating what the PAA had already confirmed.

For independent evidence of radiation-level spiking in Europe and its causes in the Ukraine, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), directed by Rafael Grossi in Vienna, has not been either independent or credible since the war began; for the archive documenting the war-fighting bias of Grossi and the IAEA,  click.

Left: Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. For more, read this: https://johnhelmer.net/

For a review of the evidence that the international and European government models for safe exposure to radiation of depleted uranium are faulty, and that the Ukrainian and IAEA statements on the Khmelnitsky detonation are misleading, read this paper, published in 2022,  by Christopher Busby, an English chemical physicist and expert on radioactivity.   

“[The] local absorbed dose from internal radioactive particles of Uranium (for example from Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons) to tissue volumes within the range of alpha decays (about 4 cells) is not small. The deposited dose to a single cell from a single alpha decay track is about 500mSv. Yet the ICRP [International Commission on Radiation Protection] model dilutes this energy into a kilogram of tissue and dismisses the resulting nanoSieverts [μSv/h], as irrelevant and unable to cause cancer. The concept of Absorbed Dose itself as a covariate for internal exposures has been questioned…”

“The current radiation risk model, which is the basis of legal limits of exposures to internal radionuclide contaminants has been shown by mechanistic and epidemiological studies to be unsafe… The evidence from Chernobyl, from the weapons fallout, from the nuclear sites, and from cell biology, and simple mechanistic considerations show that the model is unsafe. But because of economics and power, university funding and journal publication bias, no change occurs. Attempts to draw attention to the issue are blocked at every turn.  Journal reviewers and editors reject articles and letters. Court cases on cancer are regularly settled to prevent the issue going before a jury…European law, the Basic Safety Standards Directive of the European Union has a clause requiring Justification of all Practices, and these must be changed if new and important evidence emerges. ICRP also in its earlier reports (1977, 1990) stated clearly that should there be new evidence, it would address it. It never did. And the clause disappeared from later ICRP reports. In reality, all the radiation protection agencies refuse to address any new evidence.”

The scientific and political debate over Busby’s research findings can be followed here.  

Christopher Busby; source: https://www.youtube.com/

Follow Busby’s research report, published in March 2023, that “data covering the period November 2017 to November 2022 was obtained from the Atomic Weapons Establishment [AWE] Aldermaston to find if there was an increase in Uranium associated with the Ukraine war. Results from 9 High Volume Air Samplers deployed onsite and offsite by AWE showed that there were significantly increased levels of Uranium in all 9 HVAS samplers beginning in February 2022 when the war began. The result has significant public health implications for the UK and Europe.”   

Note that the data points are five high-volume air-sampling measurement locations in the UK operated by the government agency, the  Atomic Weapons Establishment. Source: https://www.researchgate.net/

Data gathering, measurement, and data charting ought not to be controversial – unless the data themselves are blacked out or misreported, as has been happening in recent days. The debate among scientists over Busby’s analysis has been focused primarily on what the cancer impacts are of exposure to DU and other sources of radiation at the abnormal levels now being registered from the Ukraine and Poland, and to be expected in Denmark, The Netherlands, and England.

In this report by Busby, obtained by the Russian state news agency Sputnik,  the northwesterly winds blowing at about five kilometres an hour from Khmelnitsky triggered radiation spiking in Poland on May 15:

Source: https://sputnikglobe.com/
In the US propaganda version,  “Newsweek has not been able to locate any official statements or credible reports that radiation levels in Khmelnytskyi or other parts of Ukraine are above normal or corroborate the claim about depleted uranium shells being destroyed in the Russian attack.”

Polish university sources and the Polish Atomic Energy Agency (PAA) corroborate the spiking. The highest levels reported publicly have been in Gdynia (0.103 μSv/h), Lublin (0.100 μSv/h) and Krakow (0.115 μSv/h).    

The official Polish reaction has been to accept the reported data measurements, but deny the biological hazards. Marie Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS), the state establishment at Lublin, close to the Ukrainian border, has confirmed the sharp increase in radiation levels from May 15. However, the university adds the qualifier: “The increase in radiation intensity observed on May 15, 2023 is a natural phenomenon that is caused by rainfall. The isotope Bi-214 (formed as a result of the decay of radon gas rising from the ground) is captured by falling water droplets, which results in an increase in radiation intensity near the soil surface recorded by MR. This phenomenon has always accompanied humanity, and the increased intensity of radiation as a result has no significance for health.”  

The report includes the first two illustrations reproduced in the lead to this story.

The university adds: “Due to the forecast rainfall, we expect another increase on May 17. It will probably be smaller, because the air has already cleared yesterday, but it depends on many factors, e.g. soaking the soil with water, wind direction, etc.”  

This is the university’s most current chart of radiation levels, confirming the spiking on May 15 and again on May 17 through May 18, diminishing since then.

Blue line=metered radiation levels; red line=above normal. Source: https://www.umcs.pl/

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