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Wolfe Creek crater lies in northwestern Australia at the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. Together with Meteor Crater, it is one of the two largest craters on Earth from which meteorite fragments have been recovered. The age of the impact is poorly constrained and unpublished data places the event at about 300,000 years ago. In comparison, Meteor Crater is well constrained by exposure dating. In this paper, we present new ages for Wolfe Creek Crater from exposure dating using the cosmogenic nuclides 10Be and 26Al, together with optically stimulated luminescence ages (OSL) on sand from a site created by the impact. We also present a new topographic survey of the crater using photogrammetry. The exposure ages range from ~86 to 128 ka. The OSL ages indicate that the age of the impact is most likely to be ~120 ka with a maximum age of 137 ka. Considering the geomorphic setting, the most likely age of the crater is 120 ± 9 ka. Last, we review the age of Meteor Crater in Arizona. Changes in production rates and scaling factors since the original dating work revise the impact age to 61.1 ± 4.8 ka, or ~20% older than previously reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Here we present a nuclear forensic study of uranium from German nuclear projects which used different geometries of metallic uranium fuel.,, Through measurement of the 230Th/234U ratio, we could determine that the material had been produced in the period from 1940 to 1943. To determine the geographical origin of the uranium, the rare-earth-element content and the 87Sr/86Sr ratio were measured. The results provide evidence that the uranium was mined in the Czech Republic. Trace amounts of 236U and 239Pu were detected at the level of their natural abundance, which indicates that the uranium fuel was not exposed to any major neutron fluence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ∼900 km long Darling Scarp in Western Australia is one of the most prominent linear topographic features on Earth. Despite the presence of over-steepened reaches in all westerly flowing streams crossing the scarp, and significant seismic activity within 100 km of the scarp, there is no historical seismicity and no reported evidence for Quaternary tectonic displacements on the underlying Darling Fault. Consequently, it is unclear whether the scarp is a rapidly evolving landform responding to recent tectonic and/or climatic forcing or a more slowly evolving landform. In order to quantify late Quaternary rates of erosion and scarp relief processes, we obtained measurements of the cosmic-ray produced nuclide beryllium-10 (Be) from outcropping bedrock surfaces along the scarp summit and face, in valley floors, and at stream knickpoints. Erosion rates of bedrock outcrops along the scarp summit surface range from 0·5 to 4·0 m Myr. These are in the same range as erosion rates of 2·1 to 3·6 m Myr on the scarp face and similar to river incision rates of 2·6 to 11·0 m Myr from valley floor bedrock straths, indicating that the Darling Scarp is a slowly eroding 'steady state' landform, without any significant contemporary relief production over the last several 100 kyr and possibly several million years. Knickpoint retreat rates determined from Be concentrations at the bases of two knickpoints on small streams incised into the scarp are 36 and 46 m Myr. If these erosion rates were sustained over longer timescales, then associated knickpoints may have initiated in the mid-Tertiary to early Neogene, consistent with early-mid Tertiary marginal uplift. Ongoing maintenance of stream disequilibrium longitudinal profiles is consistent with slow, regional base level lowering associated with recently proposed continental-scale tilting, as opposed to differential uplift along discrete faults. Cosmogenic Be analysis provides a useful tool for interpreting the palaeoseismic history of intraplate near-fault landforms over 10 to 10 years. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuclear facilities in coastal locations often discharge low-level liquid wastes into the sea and the radioisotopes in these discharges are of interest both in assessing possible environmental impacts and as tracers for coastal processes. The distributions of a range of artificial radionuclides, derived from the authorized discharges from British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) Sellafield, have been determined in the sediments of an intertidal salt marsh in the Esk Estuary, Cumbria, UK. Where published discharge histories exist (for 137Cs, 238Pu, 239,240Pu and 241Am), the sediment core-profile distributions of these radionuclides have been compared with the releases from Sellafield, and consistent values of the accumulation rate (0·226 ± 0·007 g cm−2 yr−1) are obtained. A quantitative model has been developed, describing association of radionuclides with suspended particulate material, which is then accumulated and mixed in an offshore mud patch before resuspension and deposition in the salt marsh. The model has been used to describe radionuclide distributions observed in both the mud patch and the salt marsh, and to identify isotopes for which post-depositional remobilization or solution transport from the discharge point are important. The behaviour of the commonly studied isotopes (137Cs, 238Pu, 239,240Pu and 241Am) is similar to that observed at this and other nearby locations. The activation product isotope 236U is enhanced in these sediments over the natural baseline by four to eight orders of magnitude, and the results suggest that Sellafield-derived uranium is comparably mobile to 137Cs in these sediments although the processes governing the behaviour of these two elements may be different. In situ production of 241Am by decay of its 241Pu parent has generated only 17% of the current sediment inventory of this isotope, insufficient to account for the increase over the last 20–25 years, and suggesting that the input material for these sediments is preferentially enriched in Am relative to Pu during transport from the offshore mud patch. The discharge history of 244Cm, which is unknown, has also been reconstructed from the sediment profile and the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuklearforensik verfolgt die Spur zweier Uranblöcke zu den ersten deutschen Kernreaktionsexperimenten in den 1940er Jahren zurück. In der Zuschrift auf S. 13654 ff. vergleichen M. Wallenius et al. die makroskopischen Eigenschaften der Proben mit Literaturangaben, und sie bestimmen den Herstellungszeitpunkt und die Uranquelle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuclear forensics was used to trace the history of two pieces of uranium metal, which are purported to originate from the first German nuclear reaction experiments in the 1940s. In their Communication on page 13452 ff., M. Wallenius et al. compared the macroscopic sample properties with literature information and determined the production date and source of the uranium samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]