Plutonium

[Andy Hull <hull@mail.sep.bnl.gov>]

Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 17:03:14
To: radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiun.edu
From: Andy Hull <hull@mail.sep.bnl.gov>
Subject: Plutonium

Please discard my previous missive with the same title, which I
unintentionally sent before I had corrected a few errors and had signed it
(I  don't want Melissa to get after me again about this!)


Differences in estimates of the total amount of Pu-239 produced by
atmospheric weapons tests have appeared in recent radsafe messages on the
subject. While I an not an expert on the subject and therefor hardly have
the last word on it, the following excerpts from a letter I wrote in 1975 to
George Woodwell (then a Vice-Chairman of NRDC) may be relevant.

"Atmospheric weapons testing has spread about 5E5 Ci (8.15 kg) of Pu-239
around the earth (G.P. Dix and T.J. Dubey,'Critical Parameters in Plutonium
Safety Evaluations' Health Physics, 22:6, 569-574 (1972), predominantly in
the northern hemisphere. From the ratio of the land area of the U.S. to that
of the hemisphere (O.O36), a rough estimate of the Pu-239 deposition on our
land mass is 1.8E4Ci.  However, since the release was concentrated in the
mid-latitudes is closer to 3.6E4 Ci. ....This fallout produced Pu-239 has
produced a calculated lung burden of about ).5E-15Ci/gm (or 1E-12Ci/std
person-2,000gm lung) (I.C. Nelson et al, 'Plutonium in Autopsy Tissue
Samples' Health Physics, 22:6, 925-930 (1972). If an average particle
diameter of 1.0 um is assumed, this equals 3 particles, if in a 0.1 dia., it
equals 3E3 particles. If the Tamplin-Cochran risk estimates (1/2000 or 5E-4
per 'hot spot') are assumed, this would lead to a lung cancer incidence per
1E5 persons of 150-150,000/yr. These projections seem unreasonable, since
the current overall yearly incidence of cancers of the respiratory system
(ICD 160-164, principally lung cancers) is about 40  (per 1E5) for males and
only 6.5 for females (F. Burbank, 'Patterns in Cancer Mortality in the
United States: 12950-1967' NCI Monograph 33 (1971). ....
I have made a 'back of the envelope' calculation of the amount of radium in
the top inch of soil in the U.S. It is about 2.5E5Ci. This is equal to about
1,000 'lethal' body burdens for everyone in the U.S., all lying around
unconfined. With regard to the inhalation if insoluble forms, the MPCs for
radium and plutonium are virtually the same (5E-11 uCi/cm3 and 4E-11 uCi/cm3)."

In addition to those by Bernie Cohen, who has written several authoritative
articles on Pu and the risks therefrom, a few old, but still relevant
references from my Pu file are:

A. S. Long, "Plutonium Inhalation:The Burden of Negligible Consequences"
Nuclear News, June 1971.

C. L. Comar, "Plutonium: Facts and Inferences" EPRI Journal, November 1976.

A. Grendon, "Some Plutonium FAllacies" Presented at the HPS 1976 Annual Meeting.
(If anyone is really interested, I am willing to supply a copy to him/her)

R.H. Mole, "Anxieties and Fears about Plutonium" BMJ 17 Sept 1977

C. Richmond, "The Plutonium Controversy" , Presented at LASL 8th Life
Sciences  Symposium on Radiation and Its Effects, Oct. 10, 1980. 
(I do not know if this was subsequently published, but the HPS Directory
lists Chet as still being at ORNL, so perhaps he can supply copies?

Finally, I also found an AIF (now NEI)  critique of Ms. Caldicott's slide show 
"I Have Three Children of My Own" (undated, but apparently from the 1970s)
in my files. In it she stated:
"But plutonium is the worst.  It's the most carcinogenic cancerous substance
we've ever known...It is so poisonous that a millionth of a gram and maybe
even less, if you get it into your lung,will almost certainly give you a
lung cancer 25 or 20 years later.  .By extrapolation you can't do this, but
I use it as an example, if you could put a little piece into every single
person's lung, you could kill every man, woman and child on earth with one
pound of plutonium."

AIF's response in part was:

"Though Caldicott points out, correctly, that 'you can't do' the
extrapolations that she uses, the use of them in any case is meaningless. It
would be equally valid to say that all the air in a large room could kill
every man, woman and child on .Earth, if properly distributed into their
veins; or in a single year, the US. consumes enough mercury to kill every
man, woman and child six times over: annual U.S. production hydrogen cyanide
is sufficient to cause 5 trillion deaths, amonia to kill 8 trillion,
phosgene to kill 18 trillion and enough chlorine is produced annually to
kill 400 trillion men, women and children every year."

If I recall correctly, in the 1970s the antis were using plutonium as a fear
evoking icon which would produce a public outcry which would arrest the
development of the LMFBR in its tracks  Today, its Cassini, but their
tactics are depressingly familiar.  Maybe its the big lie strategy.

Andy Hull
S&EP-BNL
Upton NY 11973
Ph. 516-344-4210
Fax 516-344-3105