At 11:28 AM 3/12/99 -0500, arromdee@inetnow.net wrote:

On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, Jamie and Bridget Wilde wrote:

     "2007 was the year the Islamic Jihad poisoned Tel Aviv's aquifer," 
Sylia said. "They used four kilos of finely ground plutonium shavings 
to contaminate the water table. They killed about thirty thousand 
people before anyone caught on. Tel Aviv's been using desalinization 
plants in the ocean for their water ever since. The aquifer is 
effectively poisoned forever. It's cost Israel billions to build the 
plants and come up with ways to minimize the contamination plume."
     "You got it," Klein affirmed. "Plutonium is a lot more dangerous 
as a terror weapon when used as a poison rather than as bomb fuel."

Please, no.

The idea that plutonium is that poisonous usually comes from anti-nuclear
propaganda.  Putting it in the water is particularly silly because plutonium,
when eaten, is many times less poisonous than inhaled.

Ah, yes. Plutonium ingested IS that poisonous. I used to work with such
things, and messing with plutonium, however infrequently and in extremely
small amounts, still scared the crap out of me.

Around eleven tons of it was put in the atmosphere by 1950's nuclear tests.
We're still around.

11 tons, world-wide over a period of time, is nothing.  "dilution is the
solution," so the trade-saying goes, and that's most certainly dilution.





Jeanne Hedge

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