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From: tmb@talcott.UUCP (Thomas M. Breuel)
Newsgroups: net.bizarre
Subject: Re: Re: plutonium :-(
Message-ID: <479@talcott.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 3-Aug-85 11:43:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: talcott.479
Posted: Sat Aug  3 11:43:55 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Aug-85 06:30:42 EDT
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Organization: Harvard University
Lines: 17

I seem to remember that plutonium causes cancer in sub-milligram
quantities. To make a bomb you need of the order of 10kg (probably
a lot more). Therefore, even a dilution of 1:10^7 may still be dangerous.
I realise that the New York water supply is probably bigger than
10^7 cubic meter, but not much bigger (New York has of the order of
10^7 inhabitants, and probably the overhead of a water supply
per inhabitant is not greater than 1 cubic meter). Altogether,
even assuming a uniform distribution, you might conceivably reach
the dangerous level of plutonium. If the distribution is non-uniform,
well...

					Thomas.

PS: wasn't there a movie once in which the main character wanted
to prove that plants in which people work with plutonium are not
secure and in the end smuggled out plutonium and dumped it into
the sewer system? No, not Silkwood, but a movie playing in England.