From Name
Michael E. Kitto

Phil - Good stories, somewhat humorous if one is not the frustrated responder. I believe Uranium is often mentioned because John Q. Public is more afraid of U than radium. It's the fear factor. While I would dare to guess that radium is more dangerous, JQP is more afraid of that nasty uranium. I was once asked about uranium "It's that what can kill Superman?" My response......"No, and Superman is not real"On a similar note, years ago I read meeting abstracts in which a geologist claimed that Fiestaware contained enough uranium to fill a house with high levels of radon. He measured a large gamma-ray peak at 186 keV (typically assigned to Ra-226). Doubting his claim, I measured the radon emanation from several pieces of Fiestaware, and no radon (below detection of 0.04 pCi/L). He had misinterpreted the 186 keV line as being Ra-226 when in fact this a major emission line for U-235. The "purified" Uranium comprising the glaze on the Fiestaware had not been around enough to ingrow the decay products. If anyone wants to read my paper, send me a note.
- Mike Kitto
"Phillip H. Jenkins" ---03/31/2011 11:42:38 AM---"Phillip H. Jenkins"
"Phillip H. Jenkins"
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03/31/2011 11:42 AM
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Radon comes from Radium
Radon comes from Radium. "Of course, everyone knows that, what's your point?", I hear you ask. My point is, why do people persist in saying that "radon comes from uranium"? That's like my saying that I came from my great, great, great grandparents. While technically true, that is certainly misleading.
Saying that radon comes from uranium leads to misunderstandings. Such as when I was at a public information meeting years ago, explaining indoor radon, and at the end asked if there were any questions, and someone said "I still don't understand how the radon comes from the nuclear power plant and gets into my house."
Or another time, back when I worked at a DOE facility and we were having an open house for public information and someone wanted to talk to someone who knew about radon....I was elected. This man lived near the Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant in southern Ohio. This is where pure uranium hexafluoride is enriched in the isotope U-235 for reactor fuel, or perhaps highly enriched for weapons. This man had had a radon test that was high and was blaming radon coming from the gaseous diffusion plant as the source. When I told him that they didn't have radium at that plant, so the radon couldn't be coming from there, but more likely was coming from the soil under his house.....he become enraged, I thought he was going to hit me....called me a government stooge....of course, folks from the Ohio Dept of Health had told him the same thing. He said, "The newspaper said that radon comes from uranium, and there's tons of uranium at that plant!"
I've had questions about radon coming from the damaged reactors in Japan. Yup, there's a lot of uranium there, too. But....radon is certainly not an issue.
When you purify uranium, you take away the decay products of the uranium, like thorium and radium. Uranium-238 ultimately decays to radon-222, but between U-238 and Rn-222, there is thorium-230, which has a half-life of something like 80,000 years. So, it takes several half-lives of Th-230....several times 80,000 years.....for the rest of the decay chain to grow into anything approaching equilibrium, as it is in rock and soil.
Reactor fuel is somewhat enriched in U-235...so what about that? U-235 ultimately decays to radon-219, actinon. However, like the U-238 decay chain, between U-235 and Rn-219 there is a long-lived radionuclide called protactium-231, Pa-231, with a half-life of something like 32,000 years. So, there is no radon issue from purified U-238 or purified U-235. Other issues, certainly, but not radon. So, put the question of radon from the Japanese reactors to rest.....and stop saying that radon comes from uranium.
My two cents for today.
Phillip H. Jenkins, PhD, CHP
Senior Health Physicist
Bowser-Morner, Inc.
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