Environmental Radioactivity

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Richard Hull
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Environmental Radioactivity

Post by Richard Hull »

This is a great reference on the environment in 1963, once the test ban treaty was signed.

Environmental Radioactivity , Merril Eisenbud, 1963

I was in my first year of college then. The atmosphere and lands of the planet were as evenly loaded with nuclear ash as they would be due to atmospheric nuclear bomb testing. Most of the short lived nuclides were decayed. The long lived materials abounded. This tome is loaded with charts, fact, figures and diagrams from sources all over the world. It is a good scholarly work with many references. Much of the work is of current or modern research at that time. The various food and vegetable absorption rates are in large tables. Attention is also given to nuclear power radioactive materials that might wind up in the environment.

My young growing body absorbed a fair amount of fallout in the 40's 50's and early 60's. I drank plenty of milk with all meals, even at school (Sr90, Co60 & Cs137). Virtually all fallout from bomb testing is now a mere shadow of its former intensity and now much of what little left of it is deep into the soil and dissolved in the oceans due to rains and runoff. The book also discusses this and notes the various tens of billions of curies of ash blanketing the earth.

The book also notes that hots spots on earth are solely around actual test sites or are of natural origin. (South America, Africa)

A good look back at the huge loading of the planet due to the hundreds of nuclear atmospheric bomb tests from 1 kiloton to 20 megatons and more.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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