http://www.cemrc.org/
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Just a quick post here, I need to go get some exercise and go ski-journing with my dogs before any plume gets here.
The latest data released from the Authorities, who are still pretending that the danger from Plutonium can be measured only by its disintegrations per minute (activity), is that the "one time plume" released was 330,000,000 Bq.
Using the "Super Calculator" which I have placed as a box link on this blog as shown below, results in
461 grams of Plutonium (assuming its all Plutonium)
Using the commonly accepted figure that as little as one microgram can kill a human, you simply multiply 461 by 1 Million to get the total number of potential kills.
The "Authorities" who looked very uncomfortable at the town hall meeting, trotted out many of the stale old lies. They actually used the "it's like getting a dental Xray, eating a Banana is far worse"
The reality is that plutonium in your lungs or liver is 100,000 times worse than the same Bq radiation from a Banana. See Table
Alrighty then, time to check and cleanup the HEPA filters.
Here is the Super Calculator location for your ease of use
And Here is the Bobby1 blog, who does a really excellent job of summarizing WIPP and Transuranics.
http://optimalprediction.com/wp/plutonium-release-from-the-wipp-radioactive-waste-facility/
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And at Radcast they make light of the comparisons between real bad radiation like Plutonium and Strontium, and Bananas
https://www.radcast.org/on-bananas-xrays-airplane-flights-and-man-made-radiation/
0.1 microgramme kills. If that is what has left the facility, there must be 100's of kgs of it blown around inside.
ReplyDeleteRight, there was 461g .46kG right next to the Panel 7 remote radiation sensor, within inches. How much more can be strewn about the whole place?
DeleteYou can't just plug "plutonium" into WolframAlpha and expect it to use the proper isotope. It is Plutonium-238 which if a microgram is inhaled and absorbed into the lungs will almost certainly give you fatal lung cancer. Based on the activity you entered and the mass it returned, it is using Plutonium-244 which has a half-life of 79 million years and a specific activity of 690,000 Bq/g. Plutonium-238 has a specific activity of 634,000,000,000 Bq/g. The WIPP release, if it were all Pu-238, would amount to 520 micrograms.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mass+of+330e6+bq+of+plutonium-238
Good point, and will improve my method. That said, very little was the high activity (and therefore low mass) of the U-238 that you mentioned, it was almost all U239 and U240 which have much longer half-lives
DeletePu-238 87.7 years
Pu-239 24100.0 years
Pu-240 6560.0 years
Pu-241 14.4 years
Pu-242 375000.0 years
Pu-243 4.95 hours
Pu-244 8.0E7 years
I will recalc and edit when I can
.144 grams or 144000 micrograms. However WIPP is now backpeddling on their figures. Keep in mind on the 3000 foot away first sample, they stated in the town hall that the reading was 46 Bq, but 98.7% of that was "background" and reported .64 Bq.
Deletehmmmmmmmm
But then the mass required to induce cancer changes with the isotope. One microgram of Pu-238 will most likely cause a fatal cancer. The cancer risk coefficients per becquerel for the alpha-emitting isotopes of plutonium are all about the same. So you can divide the half-life of the isotope in question by the half-life of Pu-238 to find the mass required to give the same cancer risk as Pu-238. For Pu-239 it is about 275 micrograms.
DeleteCancer risk coefficients for most radionuclides are available here: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/federal/402-r-99-001.pdf
The inhalation risks for the plutonium isotopes are on page 93.
for all of us non scientists...can you explain all this...or better yet are you saying all of southeast oklahoma and northern texas has been contaminated? and that many deaths will occur?? if so how soon?
ReplyDelete