IGM Plutonium find

Inter-Galactic Memo

To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt, Crypto-Nuclear Engineer
Re: Plutonium find


There is an interesting tidbit at newscientist.com today. It seems that workers recently unearthed a battered old safe which had been buried in a pit at the Hanford, Washington nuclear facility. The safe, lost for at least fifty years, contained a glass jar with 400 ml of weapons-grade plutonium—99.96% pure, according to Jon Schwantes, project director. Careful research into the plants records, and precise analysis of the sample, indicates this batch of plutonium was the first ever produced at Hanover, which makes it the first sample of the element ever made in human history (as far as we know—the Atlanteans may very well have made some, as well as one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, most likely Rueben.)
Scientists are wondering why this first batch did not make it into either of the plutonium bombs used during WWII. Both the Trinity (test site) bomb and Fat Man (the Nagasaki bomb) were plutonium bombs, while Little Boy (Hiroshima) used U-239.
Although the site where the safe was found was contaminated, it was not from the plutonium, which was safe inside its unbroken container. While plutonium is one of the longer-lived isotopes (over 20,000 year half-life), it emits alpha-particles, which, according to Schwantes, are too large to penetrate skin or even a sheet of paper. The characteristics of radioactive isotopes in general are often misunderstood and this is a good example. The plutonium is dangerous when ingested, breathed into the lungs, etc. Even in a plain glass jar it poses no threat. An open jar, or broken, and all bets are off.
So, why did it do so much damage in Japan? Even the most efficient nuclear explosion only converts around 10 % of the fissionable or fusionable material to energy. The rest is atomized and sent into the atmosphere where it slowly returns to earth on the wind, or in rain, as fallout. It’s the fallout—or the actual explosion—that kills.
As the oldest known and purest example of plutonium in existence, the Hanover find will be kept and used as a standard reference.
The find is a good example of what is often done in ignorance. At the time of its extraction and purification (an extremely costly, complex, and time-consuming process) very little was known about radioactive interactions. It was a new science. The death of one of the scientists at Los Alamos, due to accidental exposure, had not yet occurred, and the radium scandal in Europe, and the Tuskegee “experiment” were still in the future. For whatever reason, they decided the best way to get rid of the sample was to bury it.
As I see it, this is yet another reason for the completion and certification of Yucca Mountain. Hanover, Oak Ridge, and many other sites still keep secrets like this one, as well as the things we know about. We need some place to put it. A facility specifically designed to store it safely seems far better than a glass jar in a tattered and forgotten safe. But that’s just me.