From: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Subject: Re: NEWS: Radioactive Sand Proves Nuclear Reprocessing Unlawful
Reply-To: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 23:46:02 GMT

In article <1992Sep9.153215.4126@fylz.wa.com>, fyl@fylz.wa.com (Phil Hughes) writes:
>	The worldwide inventory of plutonium is manmade.  It was
> 	viturally nonexistent in the earth's crust before the U.S.
>	atomic bomb program was initiated.  By far the major use of
>	plutonium today is in the manufacture of nuclear bombs.
>
>	...
>
>	The cancer producing potential of plutonium is well
>	known.  An amount as small as on ten-millionth of an
>	ounce injected under the skin of mice has caused cancer.
>	A similar amount injected into the blood streams
>	of dogs has produced bone cancers.  However, it is the
>	lung that is the most vulnerable to plutonium.
>
>	The vulnerability of the lung to plutonium exists
>	because plutonium exposed to air ignotes spontaneously.
>	As it burns, it forms numerous tiny particles of plutonium
>	dioxide.  These particles are intensely radioactive.  If
>	inhaled, they are deposited in the deepest portions of the
>	lung.  There they remain, immobilized for hundreds of days,
>	and during this time their radiation is able to affect the 
>	cancer-sensitive cells of the lung.  The tissue around the
>	particle is exposed to a very intense localized dose of
>	radiation.
>
>	Our college, Donald Geesaman, has made an extensive analysis
>	of the scientific data related to the hazard of these
>	radioactive particles.  His analysis pointed up a very
>	sobering fact: The experimental data indicated that when small
>	portions of tissue are exposed to extremely high dosages
>	of radiation, cancer is an almost inevitable result.  In
>	other words, irradiation by plutonium oxide particles appears
>	to represent a unique carcinogenic hazard.  Somewhere
>	between a few and a few hundred such particles would be
>	enough to double an individual's chance of developing
>	fatal lung cancer.  An ounce of plutonium can form
>	10 trillion such particles.

OK, so, under ideal conditions, an ounce of plutonium can produce 10^13 such
particles.  How many such particles are likely to be produced under the
conditions in which the plutonium in question was released?  In what form was
the plutonium in question, anyway, at the time it was released?  Elemental
plutonium (which your "analysis" above assumes)?  Compounded with something
other than oxygen?  Plutonium oxide?  Leave it to yet another ecoterrorist to
take a situation and analyze it given worst-case assumptions, ignoring actual
conditions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL

Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.  That's what I get paid for.  My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below).  So
unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
organization responsible for it.  If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.