tmb@talcott.UUCP (Thomas M. Breuel) (08/03/85)
I seem to remember that plutonium causes cancer in sub-milligram quantities. To make a bomb you need of the order of 10kg (probably a lot more). Therefore, even a dilution of 1:10^7 may still be dangerous. I realise that the New York water supply is probably bigger than 10^7 cubic meter, but not much bigger (New York has of the order of 10^7 inhabitants, and probably the overhead of a water supply per inhabitant is not greater than 1 cubic meter). Altogether, even assuming a uniform distribution, you might conceivably reach the dangerous level of plutonium. If the distribution is non-uniform, well... Thomas. PS: wasn't there a movie once in which the main character wanted to prove that plants in which people work with plutonium are not secure and in the end smuggled out plutonium and dumped it into the sewer system? No, not Silkwood, but a movie playing in England.
mccauley@h-sc1.UUCP (john mccauley) (08/04/85)
In article <479@talcott.UUCP> tmb@talcott.UUCP (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: >I seem to remember that plutonium causes cancer in sub-milligram >quantities. To make a bomb you need of the order of 10kg (probably >a lot more). Therefore, even a dilution of 1:10^7 may still be dangerous. >I realise that the New York water supply is probably bigger than >10^7 cubic meter, but not much bigger (New York has of the order of >10^7 inhabitants, and probably the overhead of a water supply >per inhabitant is not greater than 1 cubic meter). Altogether, >even assuming a uniform distribution, you might conceivably reach >the dangerous level of plutonium. If the distribution is non-uniform, >well... > > Thomas. > Since the U.S. and the Soviet Union have "uniformly distributed" about 4 tons of plutonium into the atmosphere via above-ground nuclear testing, every liter of air has about 10^6 atoms of plutonium in it. According to an old _Guiness Book of World Records_, one atom is enough to give terminal lung cancer... Scott. P.S. Don't worry too much about 10^6 atoms. I don't think that 10^15 atoms can even be weighed. Along similar lines, there is a classic problem that shows that there is more than a 95 % chance that the air in your lung has at least one molecule that was part of Julius Caeser's dying breath ....
hucka@utah-cs.UUCP (Michael Hucka) (08/06/85)
[()] In article <495@h-sc1.UUCP> mccauley@h-sc1.UUCP (john scott mccauley jr.) writes: > >In article <479@talcott.UUCP> tmb@talcott.UUCP (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: >>I seem to remember that plutonium causes cancer in sub-milligram >>quantities. To make a bomb you need of the order of 10kg (probably >>a lot more). Therefore, even a dilution of 1:10^7 may still be dangerous. [lots of text omitted] >P.S. Don't worry too much about 10^6 atoms. I don't think that 10^15 atoms can >even be weighed. Along similar lines, there is a classic problem that shows >that there is more than a 95 % chance that the air in your lung has at >least one molecule that was part of Julius Caeser's dying breath .... Hey, I really don't think this is bizarre enough to be talked about on this newsgroup. Why, this sounds like a very serious matter! Isn't there a net.radiation for this? -- ........................................................................... :::::: _Mike Hucka_ ({ihnp4,decvax}!utah-cs!hucka, hucka@utah-cs.ARPA) :::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::