Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers and OpportunitiesTeller, Edward
Science
Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers and Opportunities
Teller, Edward
Nuclear energy -- Popular works; Nuclear weapons; Radioactivity -- Physiological effect
The amount of natural strontium in the human body is a quantity we know
rather well. It has been carefully measured and is about 0.7 gram in the
average adult, with proportionately less in children. Now since we know
how greatly Sr⁹⁰ has been diluted in the soil and how much natural
strontium there is in our bodies, we can calculate the expected quantity
of Sr⁹⁰ in our bones. Considering the many uncertainties in the
calculation one should not expect too good an agreement. The remarkable
fact is that the quantity of Sr⁹⁰ measured in small children does agree
with the calculated amount. For adults the measured value is quite a bit
less than the calculated amount because adult bones have been made for
the most part before there was any Sr⁹⁰ in the environment.
The fact that we can calculate how much Sr⁹⁰ is at present in the body
is most important because it gives us confidence that we understand what
is happening. It is especially important for us to understand what is
happening so that we can predict how nuclear tests which are carried out
today will affect future levels of Sr⁹⁰ in the body.
From arguments such as we have given, plus a record of the Sr⁹⁰ content
of bones over the last several years, it seems unlikely that the level
of Sr⁹⁰ will increase by more than a factor of two or so due to tests
already conducted. Actually this factor may be even smaller both because
of the mixing of the strontium with the deeper layers of the soil, and
because the radioactive strontium which stays in the ground for a long
time tends to become chemically less soluble and mixed more thoroughly
with that part of the natural strontium which is chemically unavailable.
This latter process is called “chemical aging.”
To follow radioactive strontium and normal strontium from the soil into
the food and the bones is not an easy matter. We must worry about the
question of the strontium depth in the soil and the chemical form of the
strontium. The complete identity of Sr⁹⁰ and normal strontium holds only
if both are near the same place and in the same chemical form. A further
difficulty is that until recently little was known about the behavior of
normal strontium and knowledge is accumulating slowly.
Much more is known about calcium. Now calcium and strontium do not
behave in an identical way, but they do behave similarly. In passing
from soil to man the ratio of calcium to strontium does not remain the
same but at least it changes in a more or less definite manner. Actually
most work on Sr⁹⁰ uptake has been done by comparing Sr⁹⁰ with calcium.
In order to use the data on calcium one has to find out how the calcium
to strontium ratio is changed when the material is taken up into the
human body. In the soil there is, on the average, about 1 part of
strontium to 100 parts of calcium. In the human body the ratio is about
1 to 1400.
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