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Plutonium, like other actinides, readily forms a dioxide plutonyl core (PuO 2). In the environment, this plutonyl core readily complexes with carbonate as well as other oxygen moieties (OH −, NO 2 −, NO 3 −, and SO 4 2−) to form charged complexes which can be readily mobile with low affinities to soil. [citation needed] PuO 2 (CO 3) 1 2 ...
In the past, one of the largest releases of plutonium into the environment has been nuclear bomb testing. Those tests in the air scattered some plutonium over the entire globe; this great dilution of the plutonium has resulted in the threat to each exposed person being very small as each person is only exposed to a very small amount.
Disposal of plutonium waste from nuclear power plants and dismantled nuclear weapons built during the Cold War is a nuclear-proliferation and environmental concern. Other sources of plutonium in the environment are fallout from many above-ground nuclear tests, which are now banned.
Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters is a 2013 book by American environmental historian Kate Brown.The book is a comparative history of the cities of Richland, in the northwest United States adjacent to the U.S. Department of Energy Hanford Site plutonium production area, and Ozersk, in Russia's southern Ural mountain region. [1]
Following the 2011 Fukushima I nuclear accidents, there has been increased focus on the risks associated with seismic activity and the potential for environmental radioactive release. Genpatsu-shinsai, meaning nuclear power plant earthquake disaster, is a term coined by Japanese seismologist Professor Katsuhiko Ishibashi in 1997. [140]
The environmental management field office pointed to a 2018 DOE study that estimated the radiation dose to a person who might recreate in the canyon is less than 0.1 millirem per year.
The Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles (1,518 km 2) – roughly equivalent to half the total area of Rhode Island – within Benton County, Washington. [1] [2] It is a desert environment receiving less than ten inches (250 mm) of annual precipitation, covered mostly by shrub-steppe vegetation.
The first large-scale nuclear reactors were built during World War II.These reactors were designed for the production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.The only reprocessing required, therefore, was the extraction of the plutonium (free of fission-product contamination) from the spent natural uranium fuel.