Talk:Actinides in the environment

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To-do list for Actinides in the environment: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
  • Rocky Flats.
  • Hanford, Columbia River.
  • Americium in smoke detectors?
  • Siberian contaminated city? Need to research; not really a city, more like a region.
  • Chernobyl.

Contents

[edit] To do/to mention

The contaminated city/region is the area around the Mayak plant near Chelyabinsk, where storage tanks holding radioactive waste awaiting processing exploded. U and Pu were released but the majority of the contamination seems to be in the form of fission products rather than actinides (ie does it belong in this category) 136.159.234.163 23:34, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Also: fix all of the typos, grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes which make this article look infantile. --Jim Abraham 10:25, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Feel free to fix them yourself. This article is a work-in-progress, so cosmetic fixes are still lower priority than content for the main editors. --Christopher Thomas 16:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Dear Gang of one,

I think that all four things which you have mentioned are perfectly fitting for this article. I have added some details of the Pu WAK case.

I sure that if you look at the wikipedia pages on nuclear fuel you will get some data about how much Pu/Np/Am was released in the chernobyl fire.

Rocky flats is a good one, plenty of chemistry has been done to probe the chemical nature of the Pu in the soil.

I have no idea about the Siberian contaminated city, what is the name of the place ?

Cadmium

[edit] Thorium producing radon in basements

I seem to recall that, in certain parts of the US, the local rocks had high enough thorium content to cause significant amounts of radon to build up in peoples' basements (being an inert gas, it gradually diffused out of the rock once formed as a decay product). If suitable citations can be dug up, this might be worth adding to the "thorium" section of the article. --Christopher Thomas 20:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

You are right, the level of uranium/thorium/radium in soil and rock can lead to high levels of radon being a problem in houses. I might add some references as a vast amount on radon has been done by the radiochemists.Cadmium

[edit] Death by radiation poisoning

Shut up and take a drink from the Revigator. Give Peace A Chance 08:18, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
My favourite product along these lines was Radithor. At least one person's bones were able to expose photographic plates by the time they finally keeled over... --Christopher Thomas 17:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Have you read the review of Radithor in Scientic Americian, it is a real disgusting freakshow like story. I did a quick calculation using the dose per Bq constants and by my maths the rich guy who drank 1000 bottles got the same internal dose as I would expect from more than 200 g of Pu-239. The thing is that Ra-226 is so very radiotoxic, it makes Pu look like a harmless pussy cat when you compare them gram for gram (or Bq for Bq).Cadmium
I did. I almost lost my lunch. Same as the case of the poor women using radium paint on the dials of aircraft instruments during the War who were trained to lick the brushes to give them a finer point. Descriptions of their deaths are almost unreadable. --DV8 2XL 19:42, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
I was not aware of the manner of their passing other than the fact that they tended to get breast cancer. Years ago I had to undergo Radiation health and safety training, and the health physics man running the class showed us all a load of the freakshow pictures just before lunch. (I think he might have been trying to put us off our food). The thing which was most gross was the tales he told us about the werid accidents (or occupational exposures) where no photos were taken, also he had a gross out poem about radium poisoning in women. The most gross one I saw was a scrap metal worker who was so burnt that I was unable to work out his race, the stupid award should have gone to a radiographer who put a Ir-192 source in his breast pocket I saw the photos taken of his insides when the medical doctors opened him up to fix him. He had a burn the size of a tea plate on his, and for a time he was sterile.
I have read in the IAEA reports that one british radiographer managed to get a 100 Sv gamma dose to the right hand and a 10 Sv whole body dose. The interesting thing is that the film badges and other physical doseometers recorded a lifetime occupational dose of 100 mSv. I have read the IAEA book about radiography accidents and quite a few radiographers in the book took their film badge off before doing a source recovery. Perhapes they are more scared of their boss and radiological redundancy than the dose.Cadmium
Unfortunately it is the nuclear power industry that has been left with the albatross of this sort of breathtaking stupidity hung around it's neck. --DV8 2XL 20:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] biological halflives

Does anyone know what the biological half life of radium in bone is ? I imagine that it is very long but has anyone got a trustworthy value for it ?Cadmium

[edit] Ra / Rn

I have moved the radium and radon material to its own page, this was done to make the page shorter.Cadmium

And anyway they weren't actinides --DV8 2XL 08:35, 28 May 2006 (UTC)