TEPCO Rose

[PamW]

10. There's tons spread around the world WITHOUT the bunkers.

RobertEarl states:
And there are tons of plutonium sitting in bunkers spread around the world.

There are tons of plutonium spread around the world WITHOUT the bunkers. There are tons of plutonium that are just spread around the world in the environment due to the years of atmospheric nuclear testing by the USA and the Soviet Union back in the 1950s. To be precise, there are 10 metric tons, which equals 10,000 kilograms or 10 million grams of Plutonium in the environment due to atmospheric nuclear testing. Here's a reference from Clark University, see page 5:

http://www.clarku.edu/departments/marsh/projects/community/plutonium.pdf

The largest amount of plutonium released into the environment comes from atmospheric nuclear bomb testing (1945-1962). About 10 metric tons of plutonium were released into the atmosphere during these tests.

The 10 metric tons of plutonium, summed with the other radioactive debris from the tests including Strontium-90 and Cesium-137; in total provides less than 0.03% of the average person's annual radiation exposure. Courtesy of the University of Michigan Health Physics Society chapter; see Table entry denoted "Fallout":

http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/radrus.htm

From the above, University of Michigan website; nuclear weapon test fallout is <0.03%. The vast majority of the average person's annual radiation exposure is due to Mother Nature.

BTW, while we have 10 million grams of plutonium in the environment already due to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Fukushima just added 2 grams to that 10 million gram total:

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/5774#comment-21635

The BRAWM team at the Nuclear Engineering Dept. of University of California-Berkeley has been measuring and analyzing the fallout from the Fukushima event since the beginning. One of their members, Mark Bandstra, provided the above summary in the forum maintained by the BRAWM team of the total releases from Fukushima by isotope. If you sum the plutonium isotopes; you get about 2 grams.

PamW