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The chemistry of this plutonium is different from that of the metal oxides formed from nuclear bomb detonations. One example of a site where plutonium entered the soil is Rocky Flats where in the recent past XANES (X-ray spectroscopy) has been used to determine the chemical nature of the plutonium in the soil. [21]
Disposal of plutonium waste from nuclear power plants and dismantled nuclear weapons built during the Cold War is a nuclear-proliferation and environmental concern. Other sources of plutonium in the environment are fallout from many above-ground nuclear tests, which are now banned.
Ketterer, a professor emeritus of chemistry at Northern Arizona University with extensive experience studying plutonium in the environment, collaborated with Nuclear Watch on the plutonium map pro ...
The actinide series is a group of chemical elements with atomic numbers ranging from 89 to 102, [note 1] including notable elements such as uranium and plutonium.The nuclides (or isotopes) thorium-232, uranium-235, and uranium-238 occur primordially, while trace quantities of actinium, protactinium, neptunium, and plutonium exist as a result of radioactive decay and (in the case of neptunium ...
The Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management at Los Alamos said Thursday it was preparing a response to Ketterer's findings. Ketterer and Coghlan said the concerns now are the continued downstream migration of plutonium, absorption by plants and the creation of contaminated ash following wildfires.
The environmental management field office pointed to a 2018 DOE study that estimated the radiation dose to a person who might recreate in the canyon is less than 0.1 millirem per year.
Just because a radioisotope lands on the surface of the soil, does not mean it will enter the human food chain. After release into the environment, radioactive materials can reach humans in a range of different routes, and the chemistry of the element usually dictates the most likely route.
"Plutonium is a weird material," said Mike Furlanetto, a lab scientist and the project's director. "We understand it well enough to be confident our [nuclear] stockpile works, but there are a lot ...