Health Physics Problem Of The Day

Here's an op-ed by a couple of anti-nuclear activists who claim the toxic waste from nuke plants is too dangerous.

I'm going to ignore what's "dangerous" or not, that's a relative term and has to be compared to other things.

How about this sentence?:

"Plutonium-239, for example, if inhaled in quantities as small as a millionth of an ounce, will cause cancer with a virtual 100 percent statistical certainty."

True or false?

Let's dig in.........

So, let's start with a millionth of an ounce of Pu-239 and see what we get (hopefully with no calculator input errors, I'm famous for them):

(1E-6 oz)(20 pw/1oz)(24 grains/1pw)(65mg/1grain)(6.2E-2Ci/1000mg) = 2E-6Ci Pu-239

From 10CFR20 Appendix B, the amount of inhaled Pu-239 that results in 5 rem is 1E-2 uCi = 1E-8Ci.

So,

(2E-6 Ci)(5 rem/1E-8Ci) = 1,000 rem

Since there's a 1% cancer risk increase per 10 rem, then:

(1,000 rem)(1% risk/10rem) = 100%

True that!