How radioactive is plutonium?
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I GOT THIS FROM WIKIPEDIA\n\nPlutonium is a radioactive, metallic, chemical element. It has the symbol Pu and the atomic number 94. It is the element used in most modern nuclear weapons. The most important isotope of plutonium is 239Pu, with a half-life of 24,110 years. It can be made from natural uranium and is fissile. The most stable isotope is 244Pu, with a half-life of about 80 million years, long enough to be found in extremely small quantities in nature. Nuclear materials workers sometimes call it "plute".\n\nThe isotope 239Pu is a key fissile component in modern nuclear weapons, due to its ease of fissioning and availability. The critical mass for an unreflected sphere of plutonium is 16 kg, but through the use of a neutron reflecting tamper the pit of plutonium in a fission bomb is reduced to 10 kg, which is a sphere with a diameter of 10 cm. Complete detonation of plutonium will produce an explosion of 20 kilotons of trinitrotoluene (TNT) per kilogram. (See also nuclear weapon design.)\n\nPlutonium could also be used to manufacture radiological weapons or as a (not particularly deadly) poison.\n\nAll isotopes and compounds of plutonium are toxic and radioactive. While plutonium is sometimes described in media reports as "the most toxic substance known to man", there is general agreement among experts in the field that this is incorrect. As of 2006, there has yet to be a single human death officially attributed to exposure to plutonium itself (with the exception of plutonium-related criticality accidents). Naturally-occurring radium is about 200 times more radiotoxic than plutonium, and some organic toxins like Botulin toxin are still more toxic. Botulin toxin, in particular, has a lethal dose of 300pg/kg, far less than the quantity of plutonium that poses a significant cancer risk. In addition, beta and gamma emitters (including the C-14 and K-40 in nearly all food) can cause cancer on casual contact, which alpha emitters cannot.\n\nWhen taken in by mouth, plutonium is less poisonous (except for risk of causing cancer) than several common substances including caffeine, acetaminophen, some vitamins, pseudoephedrine, and any number of plants and fungi. It is perhaps somewhat more poisonous than pure ethanol, but less so than tobacco; and many illegal drugs (some such as marijuana are negligibly poisonous). From a purely chemical standpoint, it is about as poisonous as lead and other heavy metals. Not surprisingly, it has a metalic taste. [3]\n\nThat said, there is no doubt that plutonium may be extremely dangerous when handled incorrectly. The alpha radiation it emits does not penetrate the skin, but can irradiate internal organs when plutonium is inhaled or ingested. Particularly at risk are the skeleton, whose surface it is likely to be absorbed on, and the liver, where it will collect and become concentrated. Approximately 0.008 microcuries absorbed in bone marrow is the maximum withstandable dose. Anything more is considered toxic. Extremely fine particles of plutonium (on the order of micrograms) can cause lung cancer if inhaled.\n\nOther substances including ricin, botulinum toxin, and tetanus toxin are fatal in doses of (sometimes far) under one milligram, and others (the nerve agents, the amanita toxin, the fugu toxin) are in the range of a few milligrams. As such, plutonium is not unusual in terms of toxicity, even by inhalation. In addition, those substances are fatal in hours to days, whereas plutonium (and other cancer-causing radioactives) give an increased chance of illness decades in the future. Considerably larger amounts may cause acute radiation poisoning and death if ingested or inhaled; however, so far, no human is known to have immediately died because of inhaling or ingesting plutonium and many people have measurable amounts of plutonium in their bodies.\n\nIt must be noted, however, that in contrast to naturally occurring radioisotopes such as radium or C-14, plutonium was man
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Pu 239 is mostly manmade. It is highly toxic and its half-life is 24,000 years.\nExposure to the reaction of a critical mass is not so good either.
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plutonium. neptunium, mercury ,uranium
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nuclear reactions operate by splitting heavy elements, most commonly plutonium 240 or uranium 235 producing pure energy and two elements with weights equal to almost 1/2 the origional element.
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You could build a fission device, minus the plutonium.  That'll get their attention.
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Tritium.\n\nThat is the isotope of hydrogen with one proton and two neutron in the nucleus.  It is used as a low grade radio-active activator in phosphorescent paint, replacing radium which is much more dangerous.\n\n(Science Teacher below is wrong: deuterium is a stable nucleon, it is thus not radio active)
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Sulfur is not radioactive. It is a nonmetal that takes 2 electrons to form a S-- ion. It does exist on its own in nature . It is found in the body in aminoacids.
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No, radioactive decay is a nuclear process.  It's entirely unaffected by ordinary physical effects like heat, temperature, pressure or light.
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Ignore the abusive idiot above. He has no idea what he is talking about.\n\n\nThere are lots of different radioactive elements. Some are dangerous but the vast majority are harmless. \n\nYour body and everybody else's is already full of radiocative elements. You are loaded with isotopes like 13Carbon., tritium, 44Calcium and so on. Every living thing that has ever existed on Earth has been losded with those radicoative elements. We've evolved with them from the beginning and as a result they are quite harmles to us in normal doses.\n\nA few unnatural radioactive isotopes are harmful in small doses, and some natural isotopes are dangerous if they are concentrated in the body. But the general answer is that radiocative elements are quite harmless.
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A lot of radioactive elements have decayed and no longer exist in nature.  Those that remain, have half lives long enough that they have not completely decayed.  238-Uranium, for example, has a half life of 4.468x10^9 years, which is about the age of the earth.  Only one-half of the original uranium has decayed.
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The experts at NRDC estimate between 30-35 (2002 est.) with enough weapons-grade plutonium for 50-90 more nuclear weapons. \nThe website Armgeddon Online claims they have 70.
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It is a silvery white metal, it looks shiny.\nAnd i can tell you it doesn't glow in green :D\n\nNote: the color shown by Plutonium solutions depend on both the oxidation state and the nature of the acid anion, which influences the degree of complexing of the plutonium species by the acid anion.
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taking plutonium away from the rest of the world
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If you are really interested in this topic, I recommend reading "The Plutonium Files," a recently published book. It reports on the negative health effects of uranium and plutonium, specifically the results of secret tests performed on civilian citizens and members of the military, by our government. (Almost all of whom were unaware they had unwittingly become guinea pigs.) Very interesting and informative.
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There are thousands of toxic items used in industry, agriculture, water treatment, etc that can be used as terrorist weapons. However Po-210 is very toxic.  It is readily soluble in dilute acids and disperses throughout the body.  It is 5000 times as radioactive as radium.  It emits alpha particles, which means that inside a sealed container or capsule it's virtually harmless, but in proximity to bone marrow, hair follicles, lung, liver, and kidney tissue (plus other tissues) it can deliver a high dose of radiation.  It is made in nuclear reactors by bismuth-209 absorbing a neutron to become bismuth-210, which emits a beta particle (same charge and size as an electron) to become polonium-210.  Which leads one to speculate that, if Mr. Litvinenko was indeed intentionally poisoned with this substance, the perps must have had access to a nuclear reactor and/or waste products from one.   \n \n        An interesting medical trivia point:  smoking 2 packs per day gives one on the average 1300 millirems of radiation a year because of adherence of polonium (and other radioactive substances) to tobacco leaves.  This is roughly four times the average annual US radiation dose from natural background, including radon, that all of us receive.  Of course, there are areas of the world, e.g. some spots in Iran, where the dose from radon from hot springs is ten times higher than the dose from smoking!
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Uranium is not explosive.  It is radioactive.  Even "enriched" Uranium is not explosive, it is just highly radioactive.  If you want to understand the relationship between uranium or plutonium and weaponry look up thermonuclear fisson.
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Your question is a very good one and everyone here is trying to help. Let me wade in with what I hope is a clear answer or two.\n\nCommercial reactors do not have the configuration to do what a nuclear bomb does: go promptly critical and thus have a large-scale supercritical nuclear explosion. Even Chernobyl (may the 40 or so people who died from it rest in peace) was mostly a steam explosion with a burning of the graphite core. The RBMK reactors like Chernobyl have mostly been shut down now - folks in the former Soviet Union may chime in now as to their status. \n\nModern commercial nuclear reactors (unlike the RBMK design) have large concrete domes called containments over them. The containment structures are designed to hold large amounts of pressure to guard against an accidental release of radiation. Even if the reactor core (part with the nuclear fuel) should become uncovered and thus lose its cooling, the containment will hold most of the radioactive material inside. That is precisely what happened at Three Mile Island. Most of the fuel and fission products were in the containment basement and plated out on the walls.\n\nThe most credible accidents are practiced for often at every power plant. Drills exercise the staff from the control room to the folks who go out into the field to survey for radiation. Those drills are graded not just by the plant, not just by the NRC, but by the county and state. \n\nNuclear reactors do not become nuclear bombs. If you were to take used fuel from nuclear reactors and chemically reprocess it - separating out the plutonium that is made in small amounts in the fuel - you could eventually make a bomb. We do not do reprocessing of commercial nuclear fuel in the US. There is a worry that some countries may do that. Of course, that is precisely what the military does do.\n\nMy job? I am a Health Physicist. I teach radiation protection, nuclear physics, and radiation chemistry. In the event of an accident, I read remote monitors and figure out what the pathway the radionuclides are taking out, how much, and what dose might be delivered to the population downwind. My predictions are used to advise the county about evacuation of persons living in a 20 mile radius of the power plant. I have a Bachelors of Science in biology from Baylor University, Masters in Applied Nuclear Science from Georgia Tech, and my PhD work was in leukemia research at Baylor Col. of Medicine. I was part of the Three Mile Island Recovery Team.