N. Koreans Let American Scientist Hold Lump of Plutonium

Livescience.com ^ | 2/22/2010 | Phillip F. Schewe

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Siegfried Hecker, sitting in a cold conference room, was asked by his North Korean hosts if he would like to see their "product." "Yes," Dr. Hecker replied. "Do you mean plutonium?"

Hecker, former director of the U.S. weapons lab at Los Alamos and familiar with the hazardous properties of plutonium, was surprised when two technicians carried a small red metal box into the room. Inside was a white wooden box containing two glass jars -- they looked like marmalade jars -- one containing a piece of plutonium metal, the other plutonium powder. He later asked if he could hold the jar with the metal. Only then was he pretty sure it was plutonium, because of its heaviness and because it was warm.

The warmth came from the radioactive rays emitted by plutonium. Fortunately, the rays were weak enough to be harmless, but the metal is potentially deadly if ingested or inhaled. And, of course, plutonium is particularly deadly when it powers a nuclear bomb, as it did in the nuclear explosion that obliterated Nagasaki during World War II.

The threshold for being considered a nuclear power pretty much means that a country must possess enough plutonium, about 13 pounds, to make a nuclear bomb. This dangerous element takes its name from Pluto, the god of the underworld.

Hecker has been to North Korea six times. On his first visit, in 2004, he was handed the sample of plutonium, he believes, because the North Koreans wanted to impress upon the U.S. the seriousness of their nuclear efforts. Even though at that time he was no longer Los Alamos director, Hecker was an acknowledged expert on plutonium, and would be sure to recognize what the North Koreans had done.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

One lump of Plutonium.The most toxic substance in the universe.

[ketelone]

Thats looks like a turd.

Meanwhile, isnt it known as Prutorium “Element: Pr” in North Korea?

[TigersEye]

Dr. Hecker assures us the plutonium was completely harmless.

[HiTech RedNeck]

That’s Prutonium in China.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Its chemical symbol is still Pu-element 94 on the Periodic Table.If you have of that rock you can level a city with it.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

LOL

[HiTech RedNeck]

I believe that toxicity would only be achieved if it were turned into a microfine powder and divided among humans to inhale, eventually killing all by lung cancer.

In solution or as a coarse powder, its toxicity to man is about the same as caffeine.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

I still would not pick up that rock up.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Emitting alpha particles in its decay (some of its daughter products also emit betas, but there are no gammas in its decay chain), it would be harmless to hold it in a glass jar like the scientist did.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

That is true.

[TigersEye]

And he was right. He has always looked like that. ;^)

[bIlluminati]

Jimmy Carter: Nobel Prize, 2002, for giving the nuclear bomb to North Korea.

AlGore, Nobel Prize, 2007, for lying to the world about anthropogenic global warming.

Barack Hussein Obama, Nobel Prize, 2009, for not being George W. Bush.

Poor John F’ing Kerry must feel left out. Maybe the Nobel committee can give him the half of the 1973 Prize refused by Le Duc Tho.

[dennisw]

Your first sentence is true. Kinda like anthrax.....you have to make it very fine and disperse it. Plutonium is heavy so most particles will fall on the ground

[ketelone]

Erriment ninety fo-wa, Prutorium! :D

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Dr. Bernard Cohen, health physicist at University of Pittsburgh, has offered to ingest an amount of Plutonium equal in mass to the amount of caffeine that Ralph Nader would ingest.

Nader has famously pronounced that one pound of plutonium released into the environment would end life on earth. (Soviets tried this experiment in 1986 at Chernobyl. If life on earth has ended, hiding this fact is the KGB’s most successful disinformation effort ever.)

Nader's pronouncement was based on research which showed that one pound of plutonium as an aspirate contains two million lethal doses, for humans. The population of the earth at that time was around two billion people, so he borrowed a “b” from the type font and made two million into two billion and with typical left wing solipsism generalized “human life” into “life” and changed “could if applied as an aspirate into the lungs of each individual result in the deaths of most to them” to “would end life”.

It would, of course, be unfair to call Nader an alarmist.

[mkjessup]

This is a fine opportunity to raise the subject of the late Harry K. Daghlian, Jr., who worked on the Manhattan Project and who accidentally irradiated himself in late August 1945, while conducting an experiment at Los Alamos.

What happened was a criticality accident that occurred when he accidentally dropped a small tungsten carbide brick onto a 14 lb plutonium bomb core. The particular core, intended for use as the THIRD atomic bomb had Japan not surrendered was called the "Demon core", which claimed the life of fellow scientist Louis Slotin in a similar accident.

The so-called Demon core was ultimately used during the Crossroads series of atomic tests in the Pacific, specifically the 'ABLE' test.


Those little Norks haven't got a clue of what they are truly tampering with. In a perfect world they would blow themselves up, along with the Dear Leader.

[null and void]

It would, of course, be unfair to call Nader an alarmist.

Grossly unfair.

[null and void]

[nully free associating]

Plutonium, Pluto, god of the underworld, demon core, demon pass, democrat...

[Wonder Warthog]

"One lump of Plutonium.The most toxic substance in the universe."

At least according to the anti-nuke left. Of course, anyone who knows any amount of real science knows that that is malarkey.