After Truth Seekers reply we seem to be back at square one - if the above is true how can people walk around on Bikini Island today or the any of the Navada test sites? According to the web site I posted above they seem to be most worried about cesium-137 in the soil not Plutonium. Were has it all gone? There was several high yield (megaton plus, one 15 megatons) detonations at ground level (although the bombs were so powerfull that they destroyed the island under them may have helped).
“Although extremely scarce naturally, about 5000 kg of plutonium has been released into the atmosphere by nuclear weapons tests. The soil of the U.S. contains an average of about 2 millicuries (28 milligrams) per km^2 from fallout.”
Truth Seeker, I would appreciate seeing your sources. I haven’t seen anything like this and I’ve been in the nuclear field for over 30 years. Short term death from Plutonium would have to be from heavy metal poisoning, not radiation since there is no practical short term impact of alpha radiation at feasible body burdens.
Although it may be true that inhaling 20 mg of Plutonium will kill you, it is virtually impossible to inhale even a fraction of this. As the last reference below notes, there have been approximately 10,000 pounds of plutonium released to the atmosphere in nuclear weapons tests. By your estimates, with “optimal” distribution, this would have been enough to cause cancer in every person on the globe 100 times over. Conclusions:
There is no way to even approach “optimal” distribution so it’s silly to talk about. It adds nothing to the discussion.
Cancer rates from low levels of radiation exposure are vastly overestimated by use of the very conservative Linear No Threshold (LNT) model. Cohen
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I guess we all learn something new every day. Here’s one source.
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The above is from Lawrence Livermore. Note that it is addressing the threat of a terrorist attack using plutonium rather than the potential consequences of a nulcear ground burst.
The key here is that we are talking about whether a nuclear blast could make some areas permanently unihabitable. As a hypothetical, suppose a nuclear ground burst resulted in 1 kg of plutonium being evenly deposited over 1 square km. That works out to 1 mg of plutonium per square meter. Would I walk through this area if I had to? Probably, with considerable trepidation. Would I live in it? . . . You first.
You can make all sorts of estimates as to how much dust would be floating in the air and how much of it you’d breath. The fact remains that within a relatively short period of time, you’d have inhaled sufficient plutonium to do you some serious damage. Whether that’s a day, a week, a month or a year, the area would still be effectively unihabitable.
As I noted in my original post, other elements also pose a significant health risk. Plutonium is offered merely by way of illustration.
To correct my own surmise, the photowasn’t taken before they’d left Trinity for Los Alamos. It actually dates from September 11th, when they returned to host a visit for a party of journalists to the site. The WSMR Trinity Site page has a collection of historic photos, some of which date from the same visit.
The visit itself was a further example of the spin the US authorities tried to apply to the radiation effects that were being observed in the bombed cities, as noted by Cecil. Robert Norris (Racing for the Bomb, Steerforth, 2002, p440) states that it was precisely newspaper stories that the areas had been rendered uninhabitable in the long run that led to this PR exercise:
Grove’s pair are particularly easy to see in the photo.
And again, the key here really is, is this any kind of a feasible scenario. To have 1 kg of plutonium deposited over 1 square km you need to find a way to contain a multi kiloton blast into only 1 square km and keep it airborne and breathable for an extended period of time. Interestingly enough, your cited source makes exactly the same point. Quoting from the LIvermore source (somewhat less selectively than you did):
*For this discussion, we assume that one kilogram of plutonium is available to a terrorist group. It is unlikely that dispersal of this plutonium would kill many people outright, i.e., by subjecting them to an acutely lethal dose (20 milligrams of plutonium inhaled). A person engaged in light activity breathes about 10 to 20 liters of air per minute, or about 1 cubic meter per hour. To inhale 20 milligrams of plutonium, a person would have to breathe air containing 20 milligrams of respirable particles per cubic meter for at least an hour, or 40 milligrams per cubic meter for at least half an hour, etc. At an average concentration of 20 milligrams of respirable particles per cubic meter, air containing 200 grams (20% of a kilogram) of plutonium would occupy a cube only about 22 meters on a side. It is highly unlikely that there would be no movement of air to disperse the plutonium and that anyone would remain and continue breathing the contaminated air for an hour. There are obviously all sorts of variants on this calculation, but the conclusion will remain the same: it is unlikely that a large number of people will receive an acutely lethal dose from a plutonium dispersal in the atmosphere. *
And here is the complete, unedited conclusion of the referenced Lawrence Livermore source:
*In summary, the claims of dire health consequences from the introduction of plutonium into the air or into a municipal water supply are greatly exaggerated. The combination of rapid and almost complete sedimentation, dilution in large volumes of water, and minimal uptake of plutonium from the GI tract would all act to preclude serious health consequences to the public from the latter scenario. And although the dispersal of plutonium in air (as the result of a fire or explosion, for example) would cause immense concern and cleanup problems, it would not result in widespread deaths or dire health consequences, as terrorists might hope. Dissipation due to wind and air turbulence would rapidly dilute any respirable aerosol. Only people within a few meters of the source could receive a prompt lethal dose. Delayed effects in the form of fatal cancers outside this region would probably not appear in affected individuals until years later. For a vast majority of the population of any city, the increase in cancer risk arising from exposure to plutonium aerosol would be a fraction of that arising from other, more common health hazards.
None of the above discussion should be taken to mean that the diversion and illicit use of plutonium is not a serious international problem. Such illicit use does have the potential for serious physical and psychological impacts on the public. We are concerned, however, that erroneous and exaggerated statements in the media may actually promote a market for stolen and smuggled nuclear material for the purpose of nuclear terrorism. Ignorance and fear should not play major roles in deciding how to deal with such potential threats. *
I encourage anyone with an interest in this to read the entire paper. It is well written and an easy read.
Yes, I did quote selectively, I quoted the relevant bits.
Terrorists won’t be creating a plutonium plasma. The center of a nuclear explosion (note there are actually two regions to the “fireball” – it’s the hotter and much smaller inner core that contains the weapons debris) reaches temperatures on the order of 10[sup]7[/sup] K. A chemical explosion reaches temperatures on the order of 5000 K.
Nor do you need to keep the “explosion” “airborne and breathable.” Once the material has been deposited, all you have to do is walk through it and kick up dust.
There are many variables driving fallout patterns. Nonetheless, it is certainly possible to create enough contamination in an area to make it effectively uninhabitable.
But that’s not a particularly meaningful statement.
What is “permanently”? Ten million years, or ten million microseconds? What is “uninhabitable”? Causing instant death, or causing a statistically significant increase in the chance of death from cancer over fifty years?
Perhaps most importantly, what’s the alternative? When we know those things, we can take the question seriously.
Cecil’s column appears to address certain misconceptions about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That there are some people who are so terrified of radioactivity, or who have other axes to grind, that it is in their interest to see that those misconceptions are not addressed, is not disputed, but not relevant, either.