Re: plutonium

[Dick King <king@reasoning.com>]

> 
> Howdy:
>      
> Forgive the following rant, but I just traded a pint of blood for a T-shirt so 
> the oxygen tension in my half dozen working brain cells is low.
>      
> Its easy to refute the statement that Pu is the most toxic material, that's 
> why we are so fond of doing so. But as Wes commented, its rank among
> toxic substances is not the issue. If the public hears us making the 
> argument that many materials are more toxic than plutonium, their 
> response should be "these guys just don't get it".

When i first saw this prose i nodded, but now that i think about it i think
that the superlativeness of the toxicity of the poison _is_ an issue.

Lead, for example, is a toxic metal.  Still, although i would imagine that the
average satellite has a fair amount of lead in its solder, nobody would
seriously claim that an amount of lead that a person of ordinary strength could
carry would trash an entire planet if it vaporized.  In fact, the Skylab
contained several hundred pounds of lead, used as a radiation-proof
photographic film vault, and when the spacecraft reentered people worried about
whether they were going to get hit on the noggin, but not about the lead that
would vaporize.

By making the assertion that a few dozen pounds of plutonium reentering at high
speed constitutes such a threat that we need to discard a $3.4 billion machine
rather than risk a small chance of a small chance of having that plutonium
reentering, the opponents of the launch are making a claim that plutonium is
uniquely toxic, while most industrial chemicals, even pesticides, are such that
a spill of even a few tons is a local incident where we chastise the
responsible party and then get on with our lives.


-dk