British secretly dumped Maralinga plutonium in ocean

[bananas]

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24852959-954,00.html

British secretly dumped Maralinga plutonium in ocean
Charles Miranda
December 30, 2008 10:00am

NUCLEAR waste from UK tests at Maralinga in the 1950s may have been dumped at sea despite the Federal Government ordering a proper clean-up.

<snip>

However, declassified British Government documents to be released publicly today under the 30-year rule reveal for the first time the plutonium's final resting place was probably the ocean floor.

At the height of the nuclear debate in Australia in 1978 the British agreed to clean the site they contaminated between 1955 and 1963, predominantly because they wanted to win favour with then prime minister Malcolm Fraser to secure exports of mined uranium to meet their growing energy needs.

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The British authorities demanded their Australian counterparts maintain maximum secrecy over the issue and reminded them they were under no legal obligation to clean up their contaminated work in Australia.

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Hundreds of servicemen and their families from Britain and Australia have sought compensation for exposure and a range of contracted cancers.

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[Indenturedebtor]

1. WTF?

[progressive_realist]

2. That is probably the safest place to put it.

Plutonium is denser than any natural substance, so it will tend to stay at the bottom. It has a long half-life of approximately 24,000 years and when it does decay, it converts to uranium, which has an even longer half-life, so the rate of release of radiation is very slow. The radiation released is alpha, which is only harmful to organisms in its immediate proximity. And it would be practically impossible for would-be terrorists to find and retrieve the fissile material.

The only real danger is that the plutonium is ingested by sea creatures and thereby enters the human food chain. But I am not aware of any animals that make a practice of chewing on chunks of ultra-dense metal. Plus anything that consumed appreciable amounts of it would die quickly.