Plutonium: Land Mines For Cells?

I was digging for gold and I found an article on another heavy element that I thought I would turn into my first thread:

A particle of plutonium 239 revealed by autoradiography. The black star in the middle of the picture shows tracks made by alpha rays emitted from a particle of plutonium 239 in the lung tissue of an ape. The alpha rays do not travel very far but once inside the body they can penetrate more than 10,000 cells within their range. This set of alpha tracks (magnified 500 times) occured over a 48 hr period. The plutonium 239 particle that emitted them has a half life of 24,400 years. [Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley California, September 20, 1982.]

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This illustration is taken from Robert Del Tredici's book Working in the Fields of the Bomb - published in 1987. It shows a plutonium particle emitting ionising radiation. The tracks are about 35 microns (5 cell diameters) but this is a two dimensional view of a 3D tissue event, which in fact occurs continuously in biological space. Like a land mine that never stops exploding, it is perpetually damaging and destroying cells.

Did I read that correctly? 24,000 year long mini land mine in my flesh? Drats...

If you haven't been irradiated enough yet, there is a link to the article provided.



www.animatedsoftware.com...

dunno if you have that land mine in your cells or not, but you could have found the answer to the half life of Pu239 yourself with a bit of research - Pu239 - yes it is 24,400 years.

Aas I understand it the longer the 1/2 life the less radiation is actually emmitted in any given period - so Pu239 emits much less radiation in, say, a year, than Plutonium 238 - which has a 1/2 lif of about 88 years.

I'd be quite interested in finding a simple explaination of that if anyone has one??

Alpha radiation is quite dangerous if it originates inside you because the particles are relatively huge - as large as a helium atom - so they will certainly desposite a great deal of energy into anything they hit - usually they are stopped by jsut a few cm or air, but if htey originate inside you obviously the 1st thing they hit is going to be tissue, not air.

The largest natural source of alpha radiation is Radon - a gas found in almost all rock & soil.

So even if you don't have any Pu239 in your lungs you almost certainly do have Radon already.

The killer is / are alpha emitters. Their decay path is short, not easily detected further than a few mm from a detector.

Heres a video showing how alpha emitters like PU and in this case Americium, are so dangerous to living tissue.

"24,000 year long mini land mine in my flesh? "
hey! if you live That long.
You Dont need to worry anout it!!!

originally posted by: buddha
"24,000 year long mini land mine in my flesh? "
hey! if you live That long.
You Dont need to worry anout it!!!

Because cancer from the PU killed you long ago...
Thats what PU does, irradiates nearby cells. It took 24 hours to make the radio graph image in the OP.

24 hours of bombarding ten thousand cells is long enough to mutate even you, let alone a lifetime.

PU the gift that keeps on giving, and giving and giving... 24000 years from now is only a half life away. What you think your mutant offspring will look like then?