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Putting Radiation Dose in Perspective 4

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Plutonium is REAL nasty stuff.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask
 
The glow of Cherenkov radiation is quite beautiful
Click to expand...

Agreed!


In a word: Spectacular.
2h7hpxd.jpg



I got to look at 2 Curies of Cobalt 60.
Here's what it looked like, though looks better in person.

2zyy060.jpg


Keith Cress
kcress -
 
In a philisophical sense I asked in a private forum on this site recently what was with all the proliferation of cancers all around me. I hypothesized that it might be my age, an age where anyone that lives this long is subject to the onset of lots of stuff not normally encountered during more youthful years when we are invincible or it might be that after a personal experience with the big "C", I was more tuned in to it now than before I joined the club.

In light of the events discussed here and in other threads the thought has now come to me to wonder whether or not the fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the Nevada deserts that went on during my childhood might be reaping a harvest among the population now.

Comments???

rmw
 
Plutonium is quite toxic, I was impressed on a job interview at Argonne Lab in about 1960. They had about 30 machine tools (lathes, drill presses, etc.) all in acrylic glove boxes connected to an exhaust/ collection system. I today exposure is more restricted.
 
rmw, it might be possible, but without an epidemiological study, no cancer can be connected back to a particular radiation exposure, anymore than it can be connected back to a particular cigarette. You can look up the iodine hazard in your childhood county from this map:

Keep in mind that you are probably exposed to many other hazardous sources of radiation, such as increased numbers of medical scans, depletion of the ozone layer, naturally occurring radon, and ash from coal power plants. Add to that the other carcinogenic hazards of modern life from pesticides, food additives, plasticizers, etc., and it becomes difficult to pinpoint blame.
 
blacksmith37; Plutonium is not particularly poisonous. I'm not sure where that fable has come from but it sure is prevalent.

Note these excerpts from Wikipedia:

"no human is known to have died because of inhaling or ingesting plutonium, and many people have measurable amounts of plutonium in their bodies"

"studies generally do not show especially high plutonium toxicity or plutonium-induced cancer results."

"There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during the 1940's; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."

Keith Cress
kcress -
 
Lies, lies, lies from the plutonium lobby!!!


;-) !!!!
 
trottiey,

Thanks for the link.

You have got me feeling faint. Other than radon (I didn't live in that part of the country) I have been exposed to most of what you listed. Coal ash in particular. Been around plenty of that.

Add to that having been in a few MSR's, FWH's and Condensers all in the Nuke plant steam path, I have multiple opportunities for exposure.

Oddly enough, where I spent most of my life was in the white zone shown on the link.

But I was talking about the general population and the inordinate amount of cancer that there seems to be showing up these days and for no good reason. Lots of the people affected don't have the exposures I have had. And many didn't live in high exposure zones shown on the link. Go figure.

rmw
 
Sorry to scare you! For myself, I still haven't gotten over the correlation that everyone who drinks water eventually dies. I can't bring myself to quit the stuff.

I really don't know which way the global cancer trends are headed or why. I'm not sure anyone knows, based on articles like this one:

I just try to do no harm, and I trust doctors to take care of the rest. Although sometimes I wonder if that trust is misplaced when I read stuff like this:
 
I read a similar article where a state's chief radiologist was shocked to discover how lax the application of radiation tests CT especially was for children throughout the state including many cases of no protection for areas of the body not being tested, no careful decision-making about dosage etc. It comes back to there being no compulsory regulation of radiologists in the US (some states better than others) and poor supervision by states.
 
Lots of mentioning of different doses and dose rates here -

Curies - a very large figure, as opposed to Rads, which I am used to from my time in the service, and the other figures that WoodyPE mentioned in his initial post.

Can anyone clarify and interrelate the nomenclature of the doses and dose rates here so we can be on common ground?

Thanks.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask
 
Curie is a unit of activity. If I have a lump of substance which is X curies, I know how many decays per time are occuring.

Sievert/hr is a a unit of dose rate. How much biological damage is occuring per time at a given location.

A direct conversion is possible only if you identify geometrical factors (if I have 1 Ci, I have to know how far away I am to determine dose rate) and what isotope (an alpha decay may cause more biological damage than one beta/gamma decay, and gamma energies can vary widely)

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?
 
See thread466-294445 for an explanation of how to convert rads to sieverts.

Curies and becquerels don't convert to rads so easily because they represent an amount of radioactive material, not a dose or dose rate.
 
Now I am remembering the Curie Meter Rem rule from my Navy days:

1 Curie of Cobalt 60 point source gives 1 Rem/hr at 1 meter distance.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?
 
But how do Rads relate?

That's the nomenclature I was used to as a Battalion CBR officer in the Army.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask
 
Just to summarize the link above, quality factor gives conversion from rad to rem based on type of radiation.

For gamma, QF=1.0, 1 Rad radiation creates 1 Rem dose.
For alpha, QF=10, 1 Rad radiation creates 20 Rem dose.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?
 
typo correction: alpha should've be "QF=20"

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?
 
I've worked with radiation RT all my career starting in 1952. The first exposure was to "fish pole radiography" using Radium as the source. In my last job we used a 30 curie Ir 192 which was later changed to a 100 curie source. The exposure rate for radiographer was 5 mrem/hour and collateral exposure was 2 mrem/hour. We were required to calculate the exposure rate at a distance or distance with the exposure rate to set the boundary tapes at the 2 mrem/hour rate. The only time I got a high dose was when some idiot didn't latch the trap door on Co 60 source and radiated three of us.
The only effect that I have is 3 scars on the lower right side of my groin from a radiation exposure for prostrate cancer gone wrong.

Here is one of many papers on the Thyroid Cancer in children of Chernobyl.


Here is very informative site with some good links.


 
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