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RE: "Tritium on Ice"
Jerry's point is well taken.
There were a couple of serious occupational exposures in the 30s. The
mechanism of exposure in those cases was replacement of a significant
fraction of hydrogen in proteins and DNA by tritium, with an extended
biological half life. For transient exposures, the biological half life is
the same as ordinary water, about 10-12 days. Combining that with the weak
beta, it is pretty hard to get a serious cumulative dose from a transient
exposure.
All told, tritium is about as close as a radionuclide can come to not being
a radionuclide -- more or less in a dead heat with I-129 for that honor.
Best regards.
Jim Dukelow
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland, WA
jim.dukelow@pnl.gov
It's not about trust, it's about dose and education.
These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my
management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Cohen [mailto:jjcohen@PRODIGY.NET]
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 4:11 PM
To: Ralph E. Wild
Cc: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu; Know_Nukes@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: "Tritium on Ice"
I am curious to know if anyone knows or can conceive of a plausible
situation where release of tritium to the environment could result in a
significant radiological public health problem (excluding problems of mental
health, regulatory compliance, or anything related to perceived risk).
----- Original Message -----
From: Ralph E. Wild <rewild@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
To: Norman Cohen <ncohen12@comcast.net>
Cc: <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>; <Know_Nukes@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: New book: "Tritium on Ice"
> >
> >
> >> Thus, the alleged consensus amounted basically to an opinion by a
single person.
> >>
> Sorta overlooks the EIS on construction of new tritium production
> reactor(s) by DOE, the EIS on accelerator production of triutim, ant the
> EIS on use of civilian reactors for tritium production. I doubt that
> this one person wrote all of these three environmental impact statements
> or that she retrieved all of the copies from all of the public reading
> rooms.
>
> Ralph E. Wild
> URS Corporation
>
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