To: Tim Steadham <tstead@ntirs.org>
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman_at_animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Re: Can 1 pound of Pu cause cancer to the entire world?
In-Reply-To: <20010709163036.22028.qmail@web9102.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <4.2.0.58.20010709085701.009d8a80@mail.adnc.com>

At 09:30 AM 7/9/01 , you wrote:
Russell,

I do not, never have, nor never will work for NASA or
anyone that has anything to do with NASA.  i am just
sick of people making such ridiculous claims that one
pound of Pu could kill the entire world.  I am a
nuclear engiener that is currently working for a pump
manufacturer designing pumps for power plants (both
nuclear and (the vast majority actually) non-nuclear).

I neither doubt nor do i state that Pu is not nasty
stuff that has the potential to do some damage.  What
I do argue is that nobody with any common sense could
ever claim with a stright face that 1 pound of Pu
could ever, ever cause 6.2 billion people (the
estimate by the US census Bureau of the world pop at
4:35 PM, July 3, 2001) to contract cancer.

On my website, I have a link to the pdf file with my
calculations clearly noted.  In my discussion, I
assume that we line up every single man, woman, and
child in a line and give them their fair and equal
share of the 1 pound of weapons-grade Pu and that Pu
STAYS in their body.

I gave the dose received over the course of one year
from inhalation, ingestion, and injection.  I used
straightforward calcs to come up with dose.

Then I performed a second calc and used ICRP data on
the dose received from exposure (inhalation, actually)
from Pu.  Using the ICRP data, I concluded that 1.2
million people would sttistically contract some form
of cancer as a result of their exposure to their share
of Pu.

I go on to say that this figure, although
statistically correct with the LIMITED information
available to us today, is not realistically correct
because the ICRP data assmes a large acute dose and
does not differentiate in probabilities depending on
the dose RATE - only the total dose received.

Finally, I show that this dose is only 0.1% of the
normal cancer rate and is therefore well within the
statistival deviation of normal cancer rates.
Therefore, one cannot intelligently say that one pound
of Pu would affect the world's cancer rate even if
everyone lined up and received their share of the Pu -
which would never happen.

Also, most of the exploded Pu would normally fall in
the ocean since it accounts for over 3/4's of the
surface area of the Earth...

It is interesting to note that he says .5-2 million
people have received lung cancer due to 10000 pounds
being aerosolized....that is a far cry from 6 billion
people receiving lung cancer from 1 pound of Pu :)

Best Regards,
Tim Steadham, P.E.
Nuclear Engineer


--- "Russell D. Hoffman"
<rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com> wrote:
> Sir,
>
> Since your email says you've managed to only figure
> about 12 people would
> die, I'll presume you've missed the part about the
> Pu being distributed
> directly to the people in that hypothetical,
> diabolical experiment, and not
> simply spread into the environment like it usually
> is.
>
> If that assumption is not correct, let me know.
>
> If spread into the environment, you still have
> bioaccumulation to deal
> with, and cancers caused by even minute amounts of
> Pu, which lodges in the
> body, for example in the bone.  When vaporized by a
> NASA re-entry accident
> it is the perfect size for lodging permanently in
> the human body.  It is
> undetectable once inside a human body.  12 deaths?
> I'll take a wild guess
> that you either work for NASA or a subcontractor, or
> used to.  They seem to
> be the only ones that are capable of making such
> ridiculously low estimates.
>
> Dr. John Gofman's estimates from NASA's previous
> accidents are many orders
> of magnitude higher than yours.  And his
> credentials, should you care to
> look them up, are impeccable, both as a nuclear
> physicist and as a medical
> doctor.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Russell Hoffman
>
>
>  >>> GOFMAN QUOTE: >>>>
>
> "I am prepared to defend, before any scientific
> body, and under oath in
> full public view, my estimate that ONE MILLION
> people (perhaps only 500,000
> or as many as two million) in the Northern
> Hemisphere have been
> irreversibly condemned to die of lung cancer from
> those 5 tons of
> plutonium. Indeed, were it not for the fact that by
> far MOST of the
> plutonium fell either upon the oceans or
> uninhabitable land, the figure of
> one million would be enormously larger." ("Irrevy"
> by J.W. Gofman, 1979,
> page 39.)
>
> <<<< END OF GOFMAN QUOTE (first used in STOP CASSINI
> newsletter #32 August
> 25th, 1997) <<<<
>
>
> At 08:29 AM 7/9/01 , you wrote:
> >The answer is a resounding NO.  I thought I'd give
> you
> >my website where I totally discredit and rip apart
> >your claim that 1 pound of Pu could cause cancer to
> >the entire world.
> >
> >In fact, by my analysis, the results would be maybe
> a
> >dozen or so people - if that.
> >
> >You might want to stop embarrasing yourself by
> >claiming that 1 lb. of Pu could in any way have any
> >sort of impact on the world's population.
> >
> >Regards,
> >Tim Steadham, P.E.
> >
> >Visit http://www.ntirs.org and click on the link
> about
> >1 lb. of Pu.
> >
> >__________________________________________________
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>
> *************************************************
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