[ RadSafe ] Re: Oceanic uranium l

[jjcohen at prodigy.net]

>

    It is rather presumptuous to suggest that the oceanic content of
Uranium, or any other element is the result of mankind's activities. For
example, the typical seawater concentration of uranium is about 1.0 ppm. The
volume of seawater on earth is ~10E24 liters so that the total oceanic
uranium content is ~10E12 tons , or about a thousand billion tons. I
seriously doubt that man has exploited more than 10 million tons over all of
history, a miniscule fraction of what the oceans hold..
    When the earth was first formed, I believe the oceans contained almost
pure water, but over millions of years of hydrologic cycles, minerals,
including uranium, mercury, etc were leached from geologic formations
eventually reaching the oceans, and the present total oceanic content of
these minerals far exceeds whatever man has ever utilized and/or disposed
of. Incidentally, that is also why oceanic disposal of radioacive, and/or
hazardous waste would provide a relatively safe and inexpensive option, if
the polittcal objections could ever be overcome.
Jerry Cohen



----- Original Message -----
From: "Herren, Roy WS." <Roy.Herren at med.va.gov>
To: "'Otto G. Raabe'" <ograabe at ucdavis.edu>; "James Salsman"
<james at bovik.org>
Cc: <radsafe at radlab.nl>
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 3:10 PM
Subject: RE: [ RadSafe ] pyrophoric uranium considered nonessential


> Dr. Raabe,


> If for the sake of argument, one were to give credence to the
> possibility that there may well be world wide contamination from uranium,
> isn't it most probable that the source of the majority of said
contamination
> would be from Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) from
multiple
> centuries of utilizing Coal fired power plants, and cement kilns?  In my
> humble opinion, I don't think that this is an unreasonable thesis given
> recent evidence of world wide lead and mercury contamination from
mankind's
> activities.  If I recall correctly, there has been ice core evidence from
> Green Land of wide spread lead contamination from early bronze age
smelting,
> and recent supposition of pacific ocean mercury sediment contamination
from
> eastern pacific coal fired power plants.  Therefore, presumed evidence of
> wide spread uranium contamination can not necessarily be assumed to be
> entirely from  recent military munitions activities utilizing depleted
> uranium, but rather are most likely a result of mankind's pre and post
> industrial revolution activities.
/