[ RadSafe ] Re: uranium trioxide gas exposure patterns (was: ... RE: Gardner Sellafield cluster)

[Dimiter Popoff]

James Salsman,

> Sure, I'm not disputing that, but chlorine gas blows away too,
> ....
> The difference, of course, is that chlorine has an immediate effect,

indeed chlorine sounds good in a propaganda effort.

Are you sure this is the only difference you see?
Did you just forget to quantify the concentrations?

Regards,

Dimiter

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Dimiter Popoff               Transgalactic Instruments

http://www.tgi-sci.com
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> Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 22:09:07 -0700
> From: James Salsman <james at bovik.org>
> To: radsafe at radlab.nl, andrewsjp at chartertn.net
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] uranium trioxide gas exposure patterns (was: ... RE:
> 	Gardner Sellafield cluster)
> 
> John Andrews wrote:
> 
> > [Uranium trioxide gas] blows away.  It does not stay 
> > where it is generated and deposit at the rate of 60 cm/year. 
> > It blows away.  Far away.  It dilutes.  It mixes.  It disperses.
> > It does not stay around.  Soon it is gone.  That is my point.
> 
> Sure, I'm not disputing that, but chlorine gas blows away too,
> and does so more quickly because it is a smaller molecule.  That
> hasn't kept it from being used as a chemical weapon, and I'm sure
> you know that you don't want to be anywhere near a chlorine gas leak.
> 
> The difference, of course, is that chlorine has an immediate effect,
> while uranium takes a while to make it from the lungs to the kidney,
> if there is enough to cause kidney damage, and to the testes, where
> it will accumulate over repeated exposures and lead to an increase
> in the incidence of birth defects, even if there isn't enough to
> cause kidney damage from any single exposure (it clears from the
> kidney, but accumulates in the testes, bone, and brain, where it is
> known to cause significant behavioral changes in mammals.)
> 
> Multi-milligram exposures from UO3 gas are likely without being
> near the point of impact.  The most widely used form of DU ordnance
> is the 30 mm armor piercing incendiary round, each with 292 grams
> of uranium (98% U-238.)  These bullets are fired from automatic
> weapons, typically at over 10 rounds per second, e.g. from the
> Apache helicopter's M230 gun, in bursts of a few seconds each.
> They are designed to burn on impact, but will only do so if they
> strike a hard target, and then only about 70% of each round burns.
> So, assume if 20 rounds are fired in a single burst, 10 might
> burn, resulting in two kilograms of uranium in combustion products,
> at least 200 grams, and probably 400 grams of which should be
> uranium trioxide.  The convection of the fire will cause the plume
> to spread out into an initial cloud, but after the gas cools, it
> will spread less quickly than chlorine.  Based on chlorine cloud
> behavior, I think it is reasonable to assume that such a cloud
> would occupy about 1,000 cubic meters after 10 minutes or so in
> a moderate wind.  That would mean each lungful (5 liters) would
> contain about 1.5 milligrams of elemental uranium in monomeric
> uranyl oxide form, and so a minute of exposure would probably
> result in deposition of at least a few milligrams, just from a
> single, two-second burst of machine gun fire, 10 minutes downwind.
> 
> The question I am least certain about is the deposition rate.
> For some reason, even though we have lung absorption studies of
> granular uranium trioxide dust, as far as I and Gmelin can tell,
> nobody has ever tested the toxicity of uranium trioxide gas,
> probably because even though it has been known as a uranium
> combustion product since 1961, it is "not infrequently ignored."
> 
> Sincerely,
> James Salsman
>