RE: U.S. Orders Probe Of Plutonium Exposure - Report

["Weiner, Ruth" <rfweine@sandia.gov>]

Apparently what Paducah processed was uranium oxide recovered from the
Hanford plutonium extraction facility.  In the early 1950s, I believe the
extraction was done with t-butyl phosphate, so recovered U compounds would
contain small amounts of Pu.  Considering that the idea of the Pu extraction
was to extract as much Pu as possible, those amounts would have to have been
pretty small.

Clearly only my own opinion

Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.
Sandia National Laboratories 
MS 0718, POB 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0718
505-844-4791; fax 505-844-0244
rfweine@sandia.gov


-----Original Message-----
From: antatnsu@pacbell.net [mailto:antatnsu@pacbell.net]
Sent: Monday, August 09, 1999 1:17 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: U.S. Orders Probe Of Plutonium Exposure - Report


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I couldn't agree more.  But, what I'd like to know is where the plutonium
came
from, how much of it there was, what the concentration of Pu in U was and
what
controls were there.  I suppose the investigation will tell us in a couple
of
years.  But there must be some information we can get before then (I hope).
Al
Tschaeche antatnsu@pacbell.net

William V Lipton wrote:

> My advice to all RADSAFER's:
>
> Don't knee jerk this.  From my experience working at a DOE facility, this
story
> is credible.  At the facility where I worked, many of the chemists did not
> consider natural uranium to be radioactive, and tended to handle it
without
> radiological controls.  In a sense they were correct, since, for natural
or
> depleted uranium, the chemical hazards (it's toxic to the kidneys) overide
the
> radiological hazards.  It was a problem for me, however, since the
facility
> also handled Pu.  So when I found loose alpha contamination, I had to
assume
> that it was Pu until proven otherwise.  It's credible to me that at a
facility
> which handled only uranium, radiological controls would be minimal.  If
the
> workers were not aware that there was Pu contamination, there could be
some
> serious uptakes.
>
> We should refrain from considering this to be antinuke propaganda until
more
> information is available.
>



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