4 ms·

Something to be aware of: The fact that a radioactive material "is around forever" also implies that it is not very radioactive. You can't make a material that

by lutorm 16y ago

Something to be aware of: The fact that a radioactive material "is around forever" also implies that it is not very radioactive. You can't make a material that is both intensely radioactive and stays around forever, because it's the radioactivity itself that makes it go away.

lisper 16y ago
Plutonium is indeed not "intensely radioactive." The problem with Pu is that if you ingest it, it stays in your body so you can get enough radiation over time to cause cancer. So you're not going to get radiation sickness from Pu, it's just a very potent carcinogen.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  I'm not particularly in favor of nuclear energy. But it seems the danger of plutonium in particular may be exaggerated. I've mostly read the wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity Several populations of people who have been exposed to plutonium dust (e.g. people living down-wind of Nevada test sites, Hiroshima survivors, nuclear facility workers, and "terminally ill" patients injected with Pu in 1945–46 to study Pu metabolism) have been carefully followed and analyzed. These studies generally do not show especially high plutonium toxicity or plutonium-induced cancer results.[89] "There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during the 1940's; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."[95][96] (etc, it's not something you'd want to ingest mind you). Any counter-references are welcome.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
pasbesoin 16y ago
IIRC, isn't it also, chemically, extremely toxic?
- kragen 16y ago
  Apparently not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity only describes radiation poisoning.
  - pasbesoin 16y ago
    Interesting. Most of my chemistry knowledge is 20+ years old. I'm curious to look a bit further and update it.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    That seems more like an oversight of Wikipedia. If Plutonium isn't chemically toxic, that would make it pretty much the only heavy metal (besides gold) that isn't.
    - bjelkeman-again 16y ago
      Recent research with one of the least radioactive isotopes of plutonium (plutonium-242, which has a half-life of 376,000 years) indicates that plutonium in the body may contribute to the development of tumors. In general, however, plutonium isotopic mixtures that are commonly encountered in the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear weapons programs, or thermoelectric generator applications exhibit much higher radiological toxicity than chemical toxicity. Ref: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/pl... So it is chemically toxic, but not as bad as the radiological toxicity. Although I would love to see a relative scale with this on it.
      - bjelkeman-again 16y ago
        This abstract: http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/abs/10.2307/3578993 http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/abs/10.2307/3578993 (albeit a bit hard to read if you don't parse TeX) seems to say that of 144 beagle dogs who inhaled plutonium oxide, 93 died of bone tumors, 46 of lung tumors and 2 of liver tumors. Although I can't figure out from the abstract what the dose was.
juiceandjuice 16y ago
Exactly. I went to a reactor at INL and their rods were just chilling outside of the reactor, about 50 feet from the controls. Of course, they were highly enriched uranium, so average half life was over a billion years (some was U-238) With a 24,000 year half life, Pu-239 is sort of on the border of being fairly dangerous, and it decays with an alpha particle, which is good from the standpoint of ionizing radiation but not so good if you are drinking it.
radu_floricica 16y ago
Strontium is worse, btw. Tends to behave like calcium in the body, and you pretty much get radioactive bones. I've heard a lot of talk about it in medical circles over the years (I'm from Romania... not near but not very far from Chernobyl).

by lutorm 16y ago

lisper 16y ago

Plutonium is indeed not "intensely radioactive." The problem with Pu is that if you ingest it, it stays in your body so you can get enough radiation over time to cause cancer. So you're not going to get radiation sickness from Pu, it's just a very potent carcinogen.

joe_the_user 16y ago
I'm not particularly in favor of nuclear energy. But it seems the danger of plutonium in particular may be exaggerated. I've mostly read the wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity Several populations of people who have been exposed to plutonium dust (e.g. people living down-wind of Nevada test sites, Hiroshima survivors, nuclear facility workers, and "terminally ill" patients injected with Pu in 1945–46 to study Pu metabolism) have been carefully followed and analyzed. These studies generally do not show especially high plutonium toxicity or plutonium-induced cancer results.[89] "There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during the 1940's; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."[95][96] (etc, it's not something you'd want to ingest mind you). Any counter-references are welcome.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

pasbesoin 16y ago

IIRC, isn't it also, chemically, extremely toxic?

kragen 16y ago
Apparently not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity only describes radiation poisoning.
- pasbesoin 16y ago
  Interesting. Most of my chemistry knowledge is 20+ years old. I'm curious to look a bit further and update it.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  That seems more like an oversight of Wikipedia. If Plutonium isn't chemically toxic, that would make it pretty much the only heavy metal (besides gold) that isn't.
  - bjelkeman-again 16y ago
    Recent research with one of the least radioactive isotopes of plutonium (plutonium-242, which has a half-life of 376,000 years) indicates that plutonium in the body may contribute to the development of tumors. In general, however, plutonium isotopic mixtures that are commonly encountered in the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear weapons programs, or thermoelectric generator applications exhibit much higher radiological toxicity than chemical toxicity. Ref: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/pl... So it is chemically toxic, but not as bad as the radiological toxicity. Although I would love to see a relative scale with this on it.
    - bjelkeman-again 16y ago
      This abstract: http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/abs/10.2307/3578993 http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/abs/10.2307/3578993 (albeit a bit hard to read if you don't parse TeX) seems to say that of 144 beagle dogs who inhaled plutonium oxide, 93 died of bone tumors, 46 of lung tumors and 2 of liver tumors. Although I can't figure out from the abstract what the dose was.

juiceandjuice 16y ago

Exactly. I went to a reactor at INL and their rods were just chilling outside of the reactor, about 50 feet from the controls. Of course, they were highly enriched uranium, so average half life was over a billion years (some was U-238) With a 24,000 year half life, Pu-239 is sort of on the border of being fairly dangerous, and it decays with an alpha particle, which is good from the standpoint of ionizing radiation but not so good if you are drinking it.

radu_floricica 16y ago

Strontium is worse, btw. Tends to behave like calcium in the body, and you pretty much get radioactive bones. I've heard a lot of talk about it in medical circles over the years (I'm from Romania... not near but not very far from Chernobyl).