Talk:Camp Fistclench

tibialuminescence unlikely

The entire section about nuclear waste disposal seems highly improbable to me. It seems vaguely plausible at first glance, but little of it stands up to analysis. And it seems to be entirely unreferenced. It was included when the article was first created by User:HopsonRoad, using this reference [1] by Steven J. Mock. However nothing vaguely related to those claims appears in that reference. HopsonRoad seems to be a long-standing editor with a good reputation, so I have asked him/her to respond here. Some of my concerns include:

1. The phrase the daylight months (April thru October) implies that the site experiences polar night from the beginning of November to the end of March, or 5 months. This seems much too long for this latitude. The site is said to have been east of Thule Air Base, which is at a latitude of 76°32'N. That is more southerly than Svalbard, which experiences only 2½ months of "civil" polar night and no complete polar night at all.
2. The phrasing: ... chosen due to the abundance of 'tibialuminescence' in the area. This phenomenon was created when the icecap, which is a fluid, or more accurately a plastic form, would 'roil' or 'churn', makes no sense. The later phrasing suggests that "tibialuminescence" occurs in ice under high pressure. That has nothing to do with it churning.
3. Ice cap ice does not "churn" on a scale of centuries. As ice core analysis makes clear, it is stable on a scale of hundreds of millennia.
4. I am pretty familiar with radiation physics and have never heard of "tibialuminescence". And neither has Mr. Google, apart from quotes of this article. I suspect it does not exist. Can we please find a reference that this is a real phenomenon?
5. Ice does not experience "a molecular aberration" at high pressures. It can be changed into different crystalline forms, but their properties with respect to radiation do not differ significantly from ordinary ice. Furthermore, the pressure at 1,800 metres depth is too low to cause a phase change to any of these "exotic" crystalline forms. Ice at 1,800 m depth and less than a hundred degrees below freezing will be in the same ordinary form you see in your freezer.
6. In any case there is no need for some strange new high-pressure ice form. Ordinary ice absorbs radiation (just as do all solid materials). And ordinary ice, in the presence of radioactives with high energy particles, will produce Cerenkov glow (as will most transparent materials.)
7. However, the claim that this glow was observed by reconnaissance flights makes no sense physically or logically. Physically, ice is not transparent enough to see a glow emanating from thousands of metres depth where tibialuminescence supposedly occurs. Logically, the article is claiming that pilots saw a radiation induced glow before experiments with radiation containment commenced. (If it is suggested that the mysterious "tibialuminescence" was converting background radiation to visible light bright enough to observe at high altitudes, then it certainly wasn't releasing it "slowly.")
8. The claim that the project was abandoned because the pressures at 1,800 m would rupture any known container is nonsense. The pressure at 1,800 m is high enough to require special engineering considerations but it is not at all exceptional. Even in the 1950s it would be straightforward to design a container that could resist far greater pressures. Indeed in 1960 it was actually done to 10,911 m in a manned vehicle.
9. Finally, it surely has to be noted that the whole idea is absurd. It is a colossally expensive, extremely dangerous solution for a problem that in 1955 was not seen as an important issue.

-- 81.155.95.31 (talk) 19:02, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for these observations, 81. If I recall correctly, I moved this out of the article on CRREL (or a related one) without paying too much interest in it. If you are interested, by all means, be bold and fix what you see is wrong! I don't have time to do so, myself, right now. In doing so, you might adopt for yourself a Wiki account. Sincerely, User:HopsonRoad 03:35, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank-you. I do actually have an account, but the password is cached on my home machine and I am travelling on vacation. It seems that the text in question was added by 24.96.106.157 on 27 Feb 2009. This IP has made no other edits at all. In view of the very dubious nature of these claims, the lack of references, and the fact that it was added by an anonym without discussion and with no other edits, I would like to be bold and delete the offending paragraphs.

However, ironically, I am myself editing from an IP with low edit count, so I suspect some bot would revert it and restore the misleading text! Hence, if you concur, could I please ask you to delete it? Thanks, -- 81.155.95.31 (talk) 10:39, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry not to have responded to your queries. I somehow missed your message on my talk page. It appears that you did the right thing on your own! User:HopsonRoad 02:04, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Latitude

I've added a location map, with the co-ordinates that were in the article (76°10′N 55°21′W); but I suspect that these co-ordinates are wrong, and Fistclench was in fact further north than this. Compare for example this map [2], which appears to show Fistclench slightly north of Thule. It may be that the latitude ought to be 77°10′N (the same as Camp Century), rather than the 76°10′N presently indicated. Jheald (talk) 14:21, 6 September 2013 (UTC)