Forget about Fuku for a minute
In one of the links that Bill Duff posted, I read that plutonium is "one of the most carcinogenic substances known" and "exposure to as little as one-millionth of a gram" can cause various cancers.
I read elsewhere that plutonium is present in all radioactive spent fuel from reactors.
Now, when reactors in this country are periodically shut down for refueling, literally hundreds (and sometimes even thousands) of temporary workers are brought in to assist with this and possibly other activities at the plant, which can last for many weeks.
I assume that only a small number of these workers actually have to handle highly radioactive materials, and I also assume that they wear all kinds of protective clothing and are monitored very closely. But since such incredibly small quantities of this material (and other radionuclides for that matter) can present serious health risks, what are the chances that any of these workers could inadvertently carry radioactive particles away from the plant and into the community (hotel rooms, restaurants, rental cars, etc) via their clothing, shoes, etc?
Frankly, the more you learn about this industry, the more sickening and scary it becomes...
Nuclear satellites more on silent real eases
Radioactive isotopes of cesium (e.g., cesium-137 and cesium-134) have been released to the atmosphere from atmospheric weapons testing, accidents from nuclear reactors, and nuclear-powered satellites burning up in the atmosphere upon re-entry(1). The total amount of cesium-137 released from weapons testing through 1980 was estimated as 2.6X10+7 Ci, 76% of which was released in the northern hemisphere and 24% in the southern hemisphere(2). On April 26, 1986, a steam buildup caused an explosion and fire at a nuclear power generating plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, releasing an estimated 5.4X10+5 Ci of cesium-134 and 1.1X10+6 Ci of cesium-137 into the atmosphere over Europe(3). Long-range transport spread the radionuclides through the Northern Hemisphere; no airborne activity from Chernobyl has been reported south of the equator(4). By early May 1986, these radionuclides were readily detectable in environmental samples collected in North America(5). More recent estimates have put the total activity of cesium-137 released from the Chernobyl power plant as 2.3X10+6 Ci and 1.2X10+6 Ci for cesium-134(6). On January 24, 1978, the Soviet nuclear-powered satellite Cosmos 954 re-entered earth's atmosphere over the Canadian Arctic, releasing an estimated 86 Ci of cesium-137(7). In October 1957, an accident at the Windscale nuclear weapons plant at Sellafield in the United Kingdom resulted in a release of 595 Ci of cesium-137(8). Routine activities at nuclear power plants and fuel-reprocessing stations also release cesium-137 and cesium-134 to the environment on a regular basis. Radiocesium released in airborne effluents from the normal operation of nuclear power plants is considered low in comparison to releases from atmospheric weapons testing and the major releases following accidents at nuclear power plants. In 1998, it was reported that 1.3X10-4 Ci of cesium-134 and 5.1X10-3 Ci of cesium-137 were released to the atmosphere from the Savannah River plutonium processing site in South Carolina(9). In 1993, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimated that 0.013 Ci of 134Ci and 0.023 Ci of cesium-137 were released in airborne effluents from 30 pressurize water reactor nuclear power plants operating in the United States(10). It was also estimated that 4.6X10-4 Ci of cesium-134 and 3.3X10-3 Ci of cesium-137 were released in airborne effluents from 28 boiling water reactors nuclear power plants(10).
Lovely Heard the German
Lovely
Heard the German ambassador say yesterday that they still can't eat certain types of berries in that downwind country some 25 years after Chernobyl blew
Beautiful
Good luck to them as they try to shut down every one of their nuclear plants in the next ten years or so.
Link on nuc sat
http://www.frankmckinnon.com/cesium.htm
Go read the Wiki page on
Go read the Wiki page on Plutonium. It's actually pretty hard to uptake particles, and even workers that ingest Plutonium from working with it don't show cancer as much as expected.
Virtually everyone on Earth has detectable amounts of Pu in their bodies already.
Just a fact of life from Nuclear weapons testing.
just because...
...we all have some exposure to it already doesn't seem to make it okay to expose more people to higher amounts and to distribute it further to the general population.
Of course not, but it sounds
Of course not, but it sounds like a counterexample of the idea that ""exposure to as little as one-millionth of a gram" can cause various cancers", or at least it puts in context the probability of that happening.