The Polish scientists were looking to send someone to set up monitoring of radioactive contaminants in the upper atmosphere, the legacy of atomic - weapons testing by the Soviet Union, the United States, and other countries in the 1950s. (sciencemag.org)
Despite these efforts, to detect pp neutrinos the Borexino collaboration had to go through an especially lengthy purification campaign to reduce the levels of radioactive contaminants in the scintillator liquid — particularly krypton - 85, a byproduct of nuclear testing and reprocessing that now pervades the atmosphere and produces a decay signal very similar to that from the arrival of a pp neutrino. (sciencemag.org)
The impending arrival of radioactive contaminants from Fukushima has raised concerns among coastal residents in the United States and Canada. (scientificamerican.com)