What do you mean "decay chains"? Po-210 decays to Pb-206 which is stable. So you mean Po-210 decay.
Let's shut down the chemical industry because someone attempted to poison The Skripals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_... .
> medical mistakes
Spent nuclear fuel is generally not used for medical isotopes. They specially prepare samples for irradiation to not have to use reprocessing, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt-60#Production .
> I could have a look for you
It would be illuminating to see what you find reasonable.
3. Plant operators within heavily regulated work areas are usually unaffected, and show an odd statistical wellness anomaly inconsistent with control groups. However, if one includes accidents/events with collateral impact:
4. Waste management incidents are difficult to quantify over 30000 year time scales. However, the industry has failed to even maintain containment for 30 years at some sites.
>It would be illuminating to see what you find reasonable.
Cheap distributed sustainable infrastructure more robust against conflicts/regulatory-capture/arms-proliferation, and leave a light footprint for those yet to live here. Good luck, =3
Indeed, one persons opinion is not really all that important, but one is alive because of decisions made long before they were born.
>Because plutonium sounds scary?
Which of the 14 isotopes are you referring too? In general, synthetic isotopes unknown in our evolutionary biology are far more toxic in trace exposures.
Some people don't get a chance to learn form their mistakes. Best of luck =3
> It is a complex answer, and heavily depends on decay product chemistry.
The source you provided does not agree with that assessment. It is purely radiation damage. The Pu-238 (half life 87.7 years) and Pu-239 (half-life 24,110 years) experiments.
plutonium-induced health effects are considered to be the result of energy deposited by alpha particle emissions in tissues that retain plutonium for extended periods (i.e., lung, bone, liver following inhalation exposure). Similar health effects would be expected from any alpha-emitting source that would result in similar cumulative tissue-specific radiation dose and dose rate.
They seem fairly certain that it is alpha particle damage, not chemistry.
The toxicology of soluble heavy-metal bioavailable material is a well understood area of research, and can bioaccumulate in humans several times higher than background if a food chain allows biomagnification of a contaminant. The publication assumes the reader has first year biology, and will understand test subject mortality data implications.
I would recommend studying the story of Polychlorinated biphenyls in whales, Mercury levels in salmon, and PFAS in the Veritasium hosts blood.
