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RE: Compensation of survivors -- bomb test exercises -- uptake of radionuclides
Franz,
You wrote earlier:
It is difficult to find any real numbers. You have some?
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Answer:
Many reports on contamination of the
Marshall Islands have been published, although most of the ones I have copies of
concentrate on radionuclide body burdens & dose commitments - obtained from
whole body scans, urine analyses, etc - rather than on RAMs in the
soil.
Table 6 of the report BNL 51882
(Lessard et-al, March 1985) gives Cs-137 concentrations in 6 samples
taken at Rongelap atoll in Oct. 1977 ("8,633 days post-detonation"), with values
ranging roughly from 2.3 to 7.4 pCi/g [ or 85.1 to 273.8 Bq/kg, by my
calculation ].
This is something like 200 times more
than at Christmas Island, for which Table 2 of the report NRL
1981/9 gives values ranging roughly from 0.4 to 2.4 Bq/kg of Cs-137 in
surface soil.
If I didn't know anything else about the two
islands, I think it would be a pretty good bet to conclude that the early
short-lived RAM fallout was also hundreds of times higher at Rongelap than at
Christ. Isl. because, as Andrew McEwan said, "[long-lived] Cs-137 and
short-lived fallout nuclides are deposited in roughly fixed
ratios."
If I also knew that the Christ. Isl. Cs-137
values are about the same as those from global fallout everywhere else in the
world (including their regional variability of course), then I think it
would also be a pretty good bet to conclude that any military personnel who
attended these bomb test exercises had little or no exposure due to the intake
of early short-lived RAM fallout, whereas those present on Rongelap had several
hundred times more than the global fallout range. Much more precise figures are
available since there was all sorts of monitoring & data gathering during
& after the Bravo blast, but that's beside the point. The point is, as
Andrew said, that "Cs-137 [levels] on Christmas Island .... were so
low (consistent with global fallout for an equatorial region) that it was
evident there had been no local fallout enhancement of deposition."
Wouldn't you agree, that one can therefore
conclude that compensation claims in such cases are bogus, and claims of RAM
contamination phoney ?
Thanks,
Jaro