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From: KING@KESTREL@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Fusion Wastes
Message-ID: <12259@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Oct-83 12:37:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12259
Posted: Mon Oct  3 12:37:00 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Oct-83 02:31:47 EDT
Lines: 40

From:  Richard M. King <KING at KESTREL>

	Suppose a reactor contains approximately one kilogram of tritium,
which is approximately 10e7 curies or 10e29 disintegrations per second.
Suppose some evil force releases ALL of the tritium, which is burned and
sent up to a rain cloud.  Suppose that rain cloud dumps a centimeter of rain
on a 10KM by 10KM area which includes a household with a rain barrel, and
then suppose I drink a liter of the rain water.  I think you'll have to
admit that this is close to a worst case.
	The total amount of rain is 10e9 liters, so I drink ten millicuries.
The half-life of water in the body is only a couple of weeks.  A person
holds a millicurie of potassium and carbon -- day in, day out, forever.  The
latter is more of a danger than this extremely bad scenario.
	This is an unlikely worst case.  If the reactor designers have any
sense the tritium would be stored in several separate containers.  I will
allow that it would all burn in an accident, because that accident might
include a fire.  Not all of the humidity in a given region makes it into a
rain cloud - figure a 90% reduction there.  Also, rain clouds are not
particularly efficient at dumping their moisture; some of it evaporates
before the rain falls, and some of it evaporates on the way down.  I suppose
that if I were "in charge" I would tell people not to drink water from their
rain barrels for a few days.  In the case of a municipal resivoir, 10e9
liters is a joke; 10km*10km*100m is a small municipal resivoir, and this
contains 10e13 liters.
	Storing the stuff as LiOTr or NaOTr would reduce the probability of
a leak, but I would prefer the gas form because the material would dissipate
more readily.
	The important point is that if I have to have one of life's elements
contaminated, I prefer Hydrogen.  There is so much of it in the environment
that dilution is effective; it doesn't concentrate anywhere in the body, and
it doesn't concentrate in the food chain.  (Remember that Strontium was so
dangerous because it cincentrated in bone.)  Also, very few life forms absorb
water vapor; it has to fall, and this isn't an efficient process.  Sure, it
eventually ends up in the ocean but the oceal already contains far more than
a kilogram of tritium (more like several tons)!
	No, I don't think that a fusion reactor's inventory of fuel
constitutes a health hazard.

						Dick
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