And now they drop another shoe...CURIUM-244

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-06-14 08:01

Curium-244 detected for first time outside Fukushima plant – Requires lead shield 20 times thicker than Plutonium-238
June 14th, 2011 at 10:32 AM

‹ Nukes Bite the Dust in Italy Burning of radioactive debris be aware ›

Patagonia is looking better and better but...

Submitted by Bill (not verified) on Tue, 2011-06-14 09:54.

It is probably too late. We have been lied to about pretty much everything. Between hot particles, fuel fleas, neutron flashes etc we are probably already ...

oh

whatever

and maybe we should leave

It is at 4 Bq/kg. That is

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2011-06-14 09:45.

It is at 4 Bq/kg. That is so small. Also, you do not need that much lead to shield it. I have no idea where you got that calculation from.

Shielding

Submitted by Bill Duff (not verified) on Tue, 2011-06-14 11:08.

.

Perhaps the OP arrived at the radioactivity precautions from ORNL shieding data, RAND, CRC, EE-NEWS OR WIKI

http://www.ornl.gov/info/reports/1966/3445605158156.pdf
http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P5056-1.html
http://www.crcnetbase.com/doi/abs/10.1201/9781420038217.ch20

http://enenews.com/curium-244-detected-first-time-fukushima-plant-requir...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curium

So they are comparing Cm 244

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2011-06-14 11:40.

So they are comparing Cm 244 to a 1kW Pu238 source. Why would they do that? It just makes it seem so much worse than it is to scare people. At 4 Bq/kg in dirt, that is equivalent to 1.3 picograms of Cm 244 per kilogram of dirt. That is 1.3 ppq, or parts per quadrillion.

It may be small, but I just

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2011-06-14 10:05.

It may be small, but I just have this vision of children playing outside in the sand or dirt..then coming in for lunch and not washing their hands.

So...

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2011-06-14 09:15.

Curium 244 is nasty, but a comparison to Pu238 is not directly applicable. Pu238 is an alpha emitter, and alpha can be blocked by a sheet of paper. Curium 244 emits alpha, gamma and neutrons... ugly.

link

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2011-06-14 09:07.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11042711-e.html

Great...Do you think those collecting the samples were wearing their lead shields? This makes me ill. How far can this crap travel?

many more in future

Submitted by Tdm (not verified) on Tue, 2011-06-14 08:24.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_curium

U have a link to reputable source?