...

I am old enough to remember when the average high during the dog days summer in was 83 degrees, with the 1981-2010 climate normals for Albany. πŸ–

Nowadays, it’s 85 degrees, according to the 1991-2020 climate normals.
 
Probably in ten years when the 2001-2030 normals come out, we will be talking about normal high temperature for Albany during the dog days of summer being an average of 87 degrees.
 
Come 2050, maybe the dog days of summer will mean an average of temperatures of 90 degrees.
 

β€˜It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.’ Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl | Science | AAAS

β€˜It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.’ Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl | Science | AAAS

Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world’s worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. “It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit,” says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield. Now, Ukrainian scientists are scrambling to determine whether the reactions will wink out on their own—or require extraordinary interventions to avert another accident.

Sensors are tracking a rising number of neutrons, a signal of fission, streaming from one inaccessible room, Anatolii Doroshenko of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, reported last week during discussions about dismantling the reactor. “There are many uncertainties,” says ISPNPP’s Maxim Saveliev. “But we can’t rule out the possibility of [an] accident.” The neutron counts are rising slowly, Saveliev says, suggesting managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat. Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima, Hyatt notes. “It’s a similar magnitude of hazard.”

The specter of self-sustaining fission, or criticality, in the nuclear ruins has long haunted Chernobyl. When part of the Unit Four reactor’s core melted down on 26 April 1986, uranium fuel rods, their zirconium cladding, graphite control rods, and sand dumped on the core to try to extinguish the fire melted together into a lava. It flowed into the reactor hall’s basement rooms and hardened into formations called fuel-containing materials (FCMs), which are laden with about 170 tons of irradiated uranium—95% of the original fuel.

P.M.D.

As people are afraid of chemistry, p-Menthane-3,8-diol (PMD) sounds really scary while oil of lemon eucalyptus is friendly.

But so called oil of lemon eucalyptus sold commercially is actually synthesized PMD, according to EPA. But people hate science, but they eat up marketing surrounding organic products.

 Weapons in the War On Black Flies

I used up the last of the picardin I had over the weekend, and are running low on high-concentration DEET. But black fly season is almost over. I am going to get more picardin for sure, as doesn’t stain clothing or damage rubber/plastic, doesn’t cause allergic reaction, smells nicer, and works fairly well, but maybe not as good as DEET.

But I’m interested in PMD too. I’m going to have to try a bottle of it.