BACKGROUND Health effects of working with plutonium remain unclear. Plutonium workers at the United States Department of Energy (US-DOE) Hanford Site in Washington State, USA were evaluated for increased risks of cancer and non-cancer mortality. METHODS Periods of employment in jobs with routine or non-routine potential for plutonium exposure were identified for 26,389 workers hired between 1...

The most common isotope, plutonium-239, is produced when the most common isotope of uranium, uranium-238, absorbs a neutron and then quickly decays to plutonium. It is this plutonium isotope that is most useful in making nuclear weapons, and it is produced in varying quantities in virtually all operating nuclear reactors. As fuel in a reactor is exposed to longer and longer periods of neutron i...

most of the plutonium isotopes are alpha-emitters, a fact which is of decisive importance from a biological point of view. we shall consider their potential danger to life in general, and to human life in particular. in this respect measurement of plutonium concentration in air and soil and vegetable is the object of systematic tests in numerous countries. this plutonium occurs in the fallout f...

INTRODUCTION The crucial moment of Ca-DTPA (calcium salt-diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid) therapy for the removal of inhaled plutonium is the timing of the first injection. This is because DTPA acts on plutonium while it is in the blood, this action is lost after plutonium has been deposited into the organs. It is, therefore, generally accepted that chelation therapy should be started as ear...

The toxic effects of plutonium on the human body depend on a considerable number of physical and biological factors. One of the most important biological factors is the rate of elimination of plutonium from the body. The ratio of fecal to urinary excretion of plutonium by the rat is of the order of 10: 1. This is, indeed, a favorable ratio. Preliminary information, however, indicates that the e...

Progress continued on method development for the dissolution of difficult-to-dissolve materials, the automated analysis of plutonium and uranium, the preparation of plutonium materials for the Safeguard Analytical Laboratory Evaluation (SALE) Program, and the analysis of HTGR fuel and SALE uranium materials. The previously developed Teflon-container, metal-shell apparatus was applied to the dis...

Wet and dry atmospheric fallout from nuclear weapon tests is one of the most important sources of plutonium in the Baltic Sea. The other sources: plutonium releases from spent fuel facilities in Sellafield (UK) and Cap de la Hague (France) are less important. Since 26 April 1986 it has been a new source of plutonium – Chernobyl plutonium, which should be taken under note in estimation of its ra...

Sorption of actinides, particularly plutonium, onto submicrometer-sized colloids increases their mobility, but these plutonium colloids are difficult to detect in the far-field. We identified actinides on colloids in the groundwater from the Mayak Production Association, Urals, Russia; at the source, the plutonium activity is approximately 1000 becquerels per liter. Plutonium activities are sti...

The long-term retention of inhaled soluble forms of plutonium raises concerns as to the potential health effects in persons working in nuclear energy or the nuclear weapons program. The distributions of long-term retained inhaled plutonium-nitrate [Pu (NO3)4] deposited in the lungs of an accidentally exposed nuclear worker (Human Case 0269) and in the lungs of experimentally exposed beagle dogs...

of elements to exhibit four common oxidation states: Pu(III), Pu(IV), Pu(V), and Pu(VI). In addition, plutonium complexes in aqueous solution can change their oxidation state by undergoing disproportionation or reproportionation reactions, or through radiolytic reactions. Because so many plutonium species can form and interact in solution, aqueous plutonium chemistry can be remarkably complex. ...