[ RadSafe ] Pu-239 famous chemical toxitity

[Nardi, A. Joseph]

This seems to be a very interesting, but useless, research work.  Pu-242 is
not a substance that anyone is likely to ever run into.  It would be present
in spent fuel but so diluted by the other Pu isotopes that the alpha
activity from Pu-242 would be a very small fraction of the total.  I tried
to check once if there was any possible way to obtain Pu-242 and could not
identify a method although there certainly must be methods to obtain small
quantities.  Does anyone out there know of one?  

My interest was aroused because there is a special provision in the
transportation regulations that exempts sealed sources of Pu-242 up to 20
curies.  I commented to the NRC that such an exemption was unnecessary
because such sealed sources do not and will not exist.  I did a
back-of-the-envelope calculation and estimated that there would not be much
more than 20 curies of Pu-242 in all the spent fuel in storage from US
reactors.  I would love to have someone check that calculation.

Even with that, Pu-242 is going to have a specific activity about 12,000
times higher than U-238 but only 15 times lower than Pu-239.  So if did you
did obtain research quantities of Pu-242 to do the research described in the
paper, I fail to see how you can describe it as "in the absence of
significant alpha-particle decay".

I just do see how the chemical toxicity of "real" Plutonium will ever
dominate the radiological properties.

 A. Joseph Nardi
Westinghouse Electric Company
P.O. Box 355
Pittsburgh, PA 15230
Phone - 412-374-4652
FAX - 412-374-3357
email - nardiaj at westinghouse.com

-----Original Message-----
From: James Salsman [mailto:james at bovik.org] 
Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 5:09 PM
To: radsafe at radlab.nl
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Pu-239 famous chemical toxitity


 > Pu as a chemical toxin is new to me. Can you give me a
 > useful reference?

H.G. Clayclamp and D. Luo, "Plutonium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage in the
absence of significant alpha-particle decay," Radiation Research, vol. 137
(1994), pp. 114-117, which states, "Using ... 242Pu ... chemical generation
of hydroxyl radicals was expected to exceed the radiolytic generation by one
hundred thousand-fold."

Full abstract on MEDLINE:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Ab
stract&list_uids=8265780

Posted here by yours truly a month ago:
   http://lists.radlab.nl/pipermail/radsafe/2005-August/000173.html