Plutonium From Manhatten Project Discovered In Landfill – Hanford Site
January 23, 2009 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
One of the most dangerous substances known to man has been found unguarded — in a garbage dump.
Workers cleaning up the Hanford Site, a huge decommissioned nuclear research facility in southeastern Washington state, came across an old safe buried in a pit.
Cracking it open, they found a glass bottle — which turned out to contain plutonium made for the Manhattan Project in 1945.
Plutonium is extremely radioactive, and even a tiny amount could cause lung cancer in a human who breathed it in. But this wasn’t just any plutonium — this was an extremely pure sample of the fissile isotope plutonium-239, used to make atomic bombs such as the one dropped on Nagasaki.
In fact, it now turns out that except for a tiny sample stored at the Smithsonian, the 400 milliliters from the bottle is the oldest batch of plutonium-239 in existence. It’s not enough to make a nuclear weapon, but it’d be plenty for terrorist to manufacture a “dirty bomb” with.
All the other sizable samples of plutonium-239 from 1945 went into the Nagasaki bomb or the Trinity nuclear-test bomb that preceded it. It’s not clear why this batch was left out — or how it came to end up in a sealed safe abandoned in a landfill.
Wow…..now how did this happen? It goes to show how inept our govt. Agencies really are! The manhattan project one of americas biggest secret,most important, most secure! And still material got past all the checkpoints to a landfill!makes you wonder what other breaches of national securities has happened!or did it happen due to the lack of nuclear material dump sites so they put it in a safe and dumped it!
Makes you glad hanford never had a auction of unused items!!!!!!!
How MUCH was found? milligrams? grams? ounces? I assume if it was a macro sample in a glass jar, it was 1g – 250g or something. oopsie!
Doesn’t really matter how MUCH was found, the fact that it’s not enough to make a nuclear weapon, but it’d be plenty for terrorist to manufacture a “dirty bomb” with. That’s the concern.
If that small sample was found….what else might be discovered in that landfill? Sure hope someone is going through that landfill with a “fine tooth comb”….and let’s also hope that that “someone” is NOT a terrorist or a terrorist supporter.
That sucks… I used to live in a little town called Burbank not maybe 30 minutes away. Always thought that place was suspiscious.
question?
How MUCH was found? milligrams? grams? ounces? I assume if it was a macro sample in a glass jar, it was 1g – 250g or something. oopsie!
answer:
In fact, it now turns out that except for a tiny sample stored at the Smithsonian, the 400 milliliters from the bottle is the oldest batch of plutonium-239 in existence. It’s not enough to make a nuclear weapon, but it’d be plenty for terrorist to manufacture a “dirty bomb” with.
400 ml. equals approximately 400 cc
400 cc x 19.84 grams per cubic centimeter = 7,936 grams
7,936 grams devided by 453.59 grams per pound = 17.50 pounds (!!!)
If you’re not right in the blast wave, the harm from a “dirty” bomb is all psychological, particularly if you’ve been brainwashed like these other comment authors. Pu is a very ineffective radiation source in a dirty bomb, easily chelated out if you somehow inhaled some, which is really unlikely. Alpha radiation cannot penetrate either the bottle that was found or your skin if you used the contents to bathe in, so the likelihood of a harmful scenario related to that bottle is about zilch. If global warming or dependence on foreign oil troubles you, you’d better learn to love nuclear energy and get over all that crap you learned from bumper stickers.
Agree with Safe at Hanford: The only risk from this stuff is psychological. The label shows that the bottle originally contained 20 g of lanthanum (La+). The Pu amount is mininal as either 15 (or 115) nanograms (or milligrams) of Pu depending on how your eyes and interpretive skills work. The Grandpa says: get your numbers right before doing wild, unfounded, and incorrect scare calculations. The purity of the material is the most important part showing how well our scientists of the time did their work. It should be preserved as other historical landmarks.