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Related: About this forumJapan nuclear workers inhale plutonium after bag breaks
Japan nuclear workers inhale plutonium after bag breaks
Safety and security concerns raised after equipment inspection at research facility just north of Tokyo goes wrong
Wednesday 7 June 2017 22.16 EDT
Five workers at a Japanese nuclear facility have been exposed to high levels of radiation after a bag containing plutonium apparently broke during an equipment inspection.
Contamination was found inside the nostrils of three of the five men, a sign they had inhaled radioactive dust, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) said on Wednesday. All five were also had radioactive material on their limbs after removing protective gear and taking a shower.
Agency spokesman Masataka Tanimoto said one of the men had high levels of plutonium exposure in his lungs. The worker, in his 50s, had opened the lid of the container when some of the 300g of plutonium and uranium in the broken bag flew out.
The incident occurred on Tuesday at the agencys Oarai research and development centre, a facility for nuclear fuel study that uses plutonium. It lies in Ibaraki prefecture, just north of Tokyo.
The cause of the accident is under investigation...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/08/japan-nuclear-workers-inhale-plutonium-after-bag-breaks
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)FBaggins
(26,757 posts)The most exposed individual (20,000 bq inhaled) would have a measurably higher risk of developing lung cancer over the remainder of his life, but it's a looooong way from a "death sentence"
Here's a study of many thousands of Russian nuclear workers who inhaled plutonium. Hundreds of them did die from lung cancer over the following 50 years, but their inhaled doses were many times higher.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3661277/
forgotmylogin
(7,530 posts)extreme "Silkwood" shower action.
Zoonart
(11,878 posts)to these workers and their families. What a tragedy.
SonofDonald
(2,050 posts)One grain/particle in the lungs is a death sentence, you can eat plutonium and supposedly it won't kill you as it passes through but in the lungs it's game over.
I wonder why they weren't wearing respirators while being anywhere near it?, but it said something about safety procedures in the OP.
I hope their Family's will be taken care of.
FBaggins
(26,757 posts)That nonsensical claim comes originally from Helen Caldicott and (as with so many of her pronouncements) is simply false.
Essentially everyone on the planet has inhaled small particles of plutonium. Tons of the stuff were efficiently spread around the planet through nuclear weapons testing.
SonofDonald
(2,050 posts)I've never heard of her, and I've read more than one book on nuclear and/or thermonuclear bombs, atom, hydrogen, etc... And nuclear power generation, and nuclear accidents, and testing.
They state one grain in the lungs is a death sentence, a grain is of a certain size.
And thank you but I'll believe what ive read above your thoughts any day.
I do believe we have all inhaled nasty little particles that didn't exist before 1945, over two thousand weapons have been exploded on earth since then, and they wonder where Alzheimer's comes from.
FBaggins
(26,757 posts)Since you've read more than one and all.
You'll note that I actual provided a reference in the post I pointed you to.
Here's another:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130216175757/http://www.evs.anl.gov/pub/doc/Plutonium.pdf
It allows you to calculate the specific lifetime cancer mortality risk coefficient (based on the more conservative LNT assumptions) for the amount inhaled (20,000 Bq is approximately half a million picocuries).
If the math is too difficult, you can see your memory (or the book you remember) debunked quite effectively in the prose summary:
"breathing in 5,000 respirable plutonium particles of about 3 microns each is estimated to increase an individuals risk of incurring a fatal cancer about 1% above the U.S. average."
SonofDonald
(2,050 posts)Just to create an argument?, I tell you you what, cite an article where it says I came here to have one.
Or at this point that I give a fuck.
Tell you what, I'll just put you on ignore, that'll answer your question.
And the latest is called "Dark Sun"
Look it up.
FBaggins
(26,757 posts)Fortunately for you... placing me on ignore means that you won't have to see my reply pointing out that Dark Sun is searchable online and doesn't even discuss what you claimed to have read there (nor would any reputable source... because it simply isn't true).
sue4e3
(731 posts)(More than one reliable source). I occasionally state an opinion, but since I'm old I remember having arguments before the internet. You could get away with not knowing your facts alot easier, Even still; I do remember being put in my place a few times. It really sucked and it's not very nice to enjoy doing it to someone. Especially here, even if she's wrong because let's face it sucking on a bag of plutonium is not good times, still the conversation was interesting enough
dumbcat
(2,120 posts)containing inaccuracies. It is not nice to correct people.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)As to the study that Baggy is pointing towards, this is the qualifier tacked onto the end of the authors' abstract.
"Although extensive efforts have been made to improve plutonium dose estimates in this cohort, they are nevertheless subject to large uncertainties. Large bioassay measurement errors alone are likely to have resulted in serious underestimation of risks, whereas other sources of uncertainty may have biased results in ways that are difficult to predict."
Given the layers of uncertainty they point towards, I seriously doubt that Baggins-san would be nearly as sanguine if the snoot ingesting the plutonium dust were his.
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The entire text of the following book by Gofman is available here: https://ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PP/
'Poisoned Power, The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants Before and After Three Mile Island'
by John W. Gofman, Ph.D., M.D. and Arthur R. Tamplin, Ph.D.
Copyright © 1971, 1979 by John W. Gofman and Arthur R. Tamplin
Permission is granted for downloading, copying, and distribution all or parts of this book, provided that the text and drawings are reproduced without any alterations.
Introduction: The Nuclear Juggernaut
Chapter 1: Nuclear Reactors to Generate Electricity
Chapter 2: How Radiation from Atomic Energy Programs Gets to You What it Does to You
Chapter 3: How Radiation Produces Disease and Hereditary Alterations
Chapter 4: Is Any Radiation "Safe"?
Chapter 5: Promises, Promises
Chapter 6: How Safe Are Nuclear Reactors?
Chapter 7: Nuclear Electricity and The Citizen's Rights
Chapter 8: The Nuclear Legacy Radioactive Wastes and Plutonium
Chapter 9: Alternatives Available to Us
Chapter 10: What Can Citizens Do About Nuclear Electricity?
Chapter 11: Must We Hold Out for The "Cold Corpses"?
Chapter 12: Toward An Adversary System of Scientific Inquiry
Chapter 13: The Ultimate Issue Conversion or Ecocide
Appendix I: Nuclear Power Questions and Answers
Appendix II: Moratorium Activists
Appendix III: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board
Appendix IV: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards
Appendix V: When Experts Disagree, Which Ones Shall We Believe?
Appendix VI: Nuclear Power and Alternatives
Appendix VII: Commercial Nuclear Power Reactors in the United States
Index
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https://ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PP/
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Curriculum Vitae of Dr. John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D.
The following comes from pages 379-381 of
Preventing Breast Cancer: The Story of a Major, Proven, Preventable Cause of this Disease,
by Dr. John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D., 2nd Edition, 1996.
John William Gofman is Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology in the University of California at Berkeley, and Lecturer at the Department of Medicine, University of California School of Medicine at San Francisco.
He is the author of several books and more than a hundred scientific papers in peer-review journals in the fields of nuclear / physical chemistry, coronary heart disease, ultracentrifugal analysis of the serum lipoproteins, the relationship of human chromosomes to cancer, and the biological effects of radiation, with especial reference to causation of cancer and hereditary injury.
A Narrative Chronology
While a graduate student at Berkeley, Gofman co-discovered protactinium-232, uranium-232, protactinium-233, and uranium-233, and proved the slow and fast neutron fissionability of uranium-233.
Post-doctorally, he continued work related to the chemistry of plutonium and the atomic bomb development. At that early period, less than a quarter of a milligram of plutonium-239 existed, but a half-milligram was urgently needed for physical measurements in the Manhattan Project. At the request of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Gofman and Robert Connick irradiated a ton of uranyl nitrate by placing it around the Berkeley cyclotron (to capture neutrons), for a total exposure period of six weeks, with operation night and day. In 110 Gilman Hall, they scaled up Gofman's previous test-tube-sized sodium uranyl acetate process for the plutonium's chemical extraction. Dissolving 10-pound batches of the "hot" ton in big Pyrex jars, and working around the clock with the help of eight or ten others, they reduced the ton to a half cc of liquid containing 1.2 milligrams of plutonium (twice as much as expected).
After the plutonium work, Gofman completed medical school. In 1947, he began his research on coronary heart disease and, by developing special flotation ultracentrifugal techniques, he and his colleagues demonstrated the existence of diverse low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and high-density lipoproteins (HDL). Their work on lipoprotein chemistry and health consequences included the first prospective studies demonstrating that high LDL levels represent a risk-factor for coronary heart disease and that low HDL levels represent a risk-factor for coronary heart disease. His principal book on the heart disease research is Coronary Heart Disease (1959, Charles C. Thomas, Publisher).
In the early 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) asked him if he would establish a Biomedical Research Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for the purpose of evaluating the health effects of all types of nuclear activities. From 1963-1965, he served as the division's first director, concurrently with service as an Associate Director of the entire Laboratory, for Biomedicine. Later he stepped down from these administrative activities in order to have more time for his own laboratory research in cancer, chromosomes, and radiation, as well as his analytical work on the data from the Japanese atomic-bomb survivors and other irradiated human populations.
In 1965, Dr. Ian MacKenzie published an elegant report entitled "Breast Cancer Following Multiple Fluoroscopies" (British J. of Cancer 19: 1-8) and in 1968, Wanebo and co-workers, stimulated by MacKenzie's work, reported on "Breast Cancer after Exposure to the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (New England J. of Medicine 279:667-671), but few were willing to concede that breast-cancer could be induced by low-LET radiation.
Gofman and his colleague, Dr. Arthur Tamplin, quantified the breast-cancer risk (1970, The Lancet 1:297), looked at the other available evidence, and concluded overall that human exposure to ionizing radiation was much more serious than previously recognized (Gofman 1969; Gofman 1971).
Because of this finding, Gofman and Tamplin spoke out publicly in favor of re-examining two programs which they had previously accepted. One was the AEC's "Project Plowshare," a program to use hundreds or thousands of nuclear explosions to liberate natural gas in the Rocky Mountains and to excavate harbors and canals. Experimental shots had already been done, for example, in Colorado and Nevada. The second program was the AEC's plan to license about 1,000 nuclear power plants as quickly as possible and to build a "plutonium economy" based on breeder reactors. In 1970, Gofman and Tamplin proposed a five-year moratorium on licensing of commercial nuclear power plants.
For Gofman and Tamplin, the public health was the issue of prime importance. The Atomic Energy Commission was not pleased. In 1973, Gofman returned to full-time teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, until choosing an early and active "retirement" --- a retirement to full-time research on radiation health-effects. This research led to publication of four scientific books, and to the current work, Preventing Breast Cancer. The previous books are:
Radiation And Human Health, 908 pages (1981).
X-Rays: Health Effects of Common Exams (with Egan O'Connor), 439 pages (1985).
Radiation-Induced Cancer From Low-Dose Exposure: A Independent Analysis, 480 pages (1990).
Chernobyl Accident: Radiation Consequences for This and Future Generations, 574 pages (1994). It is in the Russian language. An English-language edition will be published in the future.
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Much more available here: https://ratical.org/radiation/CNR/JWGcv.html
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