From Name
Leo Moorman

Phil,
 
I understand the frustration with explaining this to the public and trying
to avoid being knocked out in the process, especially after a disaster with
Uranium where some will bring up these issues from a novice
persepective.
 
I too have had my share of calls by people wanting
to get "THE" conversion factor of radioactive water in pCi/L
into milliSievert. Until I ask them "which pathway of exposure do you assume"
which usually is followed by a lot of confusion on their part,
especially when I tell them unless they answer this question first no
single conversion factor can be calculated, unless assumptions are made that may
or may not be true.
 
Neverhteless, your point is very well taken, yet I feel I myself to be in
the camp where I can understand refering to uranium as a source for radon. I had
just finished a few sentences in a paper this week where I had to choose how to
introduce the issue to a community outside the radon community. This is what I
choose to write:
 
"The
indoor air in homes is known to contain a radioactive rare gas consisting of
Radon-222 atoms. These atoms are originally formed by several radioactive decay
events from Uranium (U-238) that has a half life of 4.5 billion years in rocks
and soil. The atom itself is unstable and decays with a half life of 3.8 days.
It is not chemically active, with a single known exception, and when it
disintegrates it will in the next few hours disintegrate further through a chain
of metallic atoms to a more stable isotope of lead (Pb-210) which itself
has a half life of 22 years. These metallic elements are grouped together
known as the ‘short term radon decay products (sRDP’s) and when the sRDP’s are
caught in the lung their radioactivity is the cause for the health concern in
indoor air to humans causing lung cancer. "
 
I want to clarify why I bring uranium into this story and not radium. It is
because it is the first element of the decay series  known as the
U-238 decay series. It should give members of the other community  an
immediate sense that the time scale of the source of the problem does
not go away over a time scale as large as "Homo Sapiens"
existed.   
 
Maybe this clarifies why some people (at least in my case and those
who look at it like me) refer to uranium as a source. 
 
For anyone who wants to know about this decay series or about the other
three decay series scientists know about. Relevant information is available in
an excellent article on the AARST website: an article by Robert K. Lewis and
Paul N. Houle in 2009 "The Living Radon Reference manual". Page 105
The others can be found on pages 103-106 ofthe same Manual.
 
Leo Moorman
Radon Home Measurment, Inc.
Fort Collins, CO
 
 
 
In a message dated 3/31/2011 9:42:39 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
pjenkins@BOWSER-MORNER.COM writes:
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,
CHPSenior Health PhysicistBowser-Morner, Inc.Mail: P.O. Box 51 -
Dayton, OH 45401Delivery: 4514 Taylorsville Road - Dayton, OH
45424Voice: (937) 236-8805 x248Fax: (937) 233-2024E-mail: pjenkins@bowser-morner.comWeb:
www.bowser-morner.com
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