ionetics

Unreliable and possibly off-topic

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Thursday, February 17, 2005

Things to worry about

Why suffer free-floating anxiety when it can attached to real stuff like this.

Plutonium 'missing' at Sellafield

Enough plutonium to make seven nuclear bombs is unaccounted for in the records of Sellafield power station, British Nuclear Group is expected to announce. The Times claims an annual audit due to be published later will show that 30kg of plutonium is classified as "material unaccounted for" during 2004. A BBC correspondent expected British Nuclear Fuels to admit a "paper loss". And the Department of Trade and Industry said the audit "does not represent any material going missing".

Despite poo-pooing of its toxicity, heavy metals like plutonium are not what you want settling on your radishes, and the isotopic mixture produced by reactors is six times more radioactive than its commonest isotope, Pu239.