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Xenon



At 10:21 AM 4/3/2002 -0500, RuthWeiner@aol.com wrote:

  Incidentally, the ability of Xenon to form compounds, under certain 

conditions, was discovered when I was in graduate school, in (I believe) 

1961, but those conditions are certainly much more stringent than the 

conditions found in the ambient evnironment.  Generally, ideal gases would 

be trapped by van der Waals forces, not even by the weak chemical bonding 

that binds some molecules to surfaces.



Ruth, besides clathrate formation, it has been known (since 1962) that 

xenon like other noble gases are capable of forming ionic or covalent bonds 

with highly reactive elements such as oxygen or fluorine.

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Back to Commoner: the projections of nuclear power in the late 1970s, 

coupled with the ideal gas behavior of Kr-85 and its yield in controlled 

fission, could have been projected at that time to produce significant 

exposure from skyshine and groundshine.   It is NOT a question of 

inhalation, but more of groundshine and especially skyshine.  The skyshine 

dose conversion factor for Kr-85 is significant.  In fact, I believe one 

might say that the lack of observed health effects from Kr-85 in the 

atmosphere shows that the LNT does NOT apply.  PLEASE NOTE: that is my 

speculation alone -- no one has come up with this idea as far as I know 

(and no, I haven't surfed the web to find out).



Ruth, have you ever seen any predictions concerning the annual dose from 

the skyshine related to xenon?



Bill Field





William Field, Ph.D.

College of Public Health

University of Iowa

mailto:bill-field@uiowa.edu



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