DA: Border Crossing

In the DA "Border Crossing" a reader tells a seemingly-plausible story about a common smuggling mishap...  but MasterBlaster sent me a PM questioning the story.  

He said,  "You should probably count this as an Urban Legend. A piece of plutonim smaller than critical mass would be only a low level alpha emitter. It would register on a detector, but would not 'burn a hole' in someone. Beyond critical mass, the plutonium would emit strong gamma, melt, and kill in a few minutes."

I don't know much about plutonium -- is he right?

Border Crossing

(March 2002, Hungary) I can't name sources for this incident, but the story is common knowledge among Hungarian border guards who work on the Ukraine border.  Even the smallest border stations have Geiger-Müller detector gates, because of the threat of nuclear smugglers from ex-USSR countries. These gates resemble empty doorframes, or metal detectors at airports, but instead of metal they detect radioactive materials.

A man with a backpack arrived at the border.  He seemed a bit dizzy, maybe drunk, but vodka is cheap in the Ukraine and drunken passengers are quite everyday in this area.  The man was instructed to pass through the Geiger-Müller detector gate.  He seemed a bit anxious, but finally he obeyed -- and the gate signaled a red alert!

A glance at the dosimeter made everyone run for their lives.  The man was hot!

The Hungarian army dispatched an ABC (Atomic-Biological-Chemical) reconnaissance vehicle to determine what had happened.  The soldiers found the man sprawled face down, dead, a few steps away from the gate.  They turned the body over and found a large hole burnt into his stomach.  The moron had taped a piece of plutonium to his body!                     

Later they found a discarded nuclear-waste canister on the Ukrainian side of the border.  If the man hadn't removed the plutonium to hide under his clothing, neither the gate nor the border guards would have spotted what he was carrying, and he would still be alive today...  but perhaps others would not.

Submitted by: Anonymous

Of course, we could always check ou the factsheet for plutonium's properties.  
Looks like a UL to me - Pu is only a weak gamma emitter, most of it's radiation is alpha, which won't even penetrate the skin.
As an aside, regarding, say, a terrorist threat, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory suggests that, while it is a cause for a certain amount of concern, it's not exactly horrendous.

A small chunk of plutonium is perfectly safe to handle. You could stick it in your trouser pocket for a day and not feel too concerned about your fertility. A critical mass of plutonium would probably be too heavy to move by taping to your stomach.

It's not radiation that kills from pure plutonium, it's the dust.


However in this story, the important line is:

Later they found a discarded nuclear-waste canister on the Ukrainian side of the border.

We seem to be talking about part of a spent fuel rod from a reactor. it's bloody useless in making bombs unless you have a large-scale reprocessing plant. You could use it as a weapon by leaving it under someone's bed, but as far as I'm aware, there's little or no market for that kind of stuff.

A bit of fuel rod would cause a big burn on the guy's stomach, but it wouldn't kill someone in a few minutes. The heroes of the Chernobyl disaster who went up to the reactor to do the first bits of the clearup (chucking spent fuel rods back into the reactor core) lasted a few hours after. If he'd taken it out to play with it within the past few days, it could be that he went over at that time due to the weakened state of his body and the stress of making the actual border crossing.

Whatever the guy had done to kill himself with it, he was transporting something lethal that he probably couldn't have sold.


Wanker.

Okay:

Pu emits gamma and alpha rays.  Gamma rays penetrate deeply, but do not do much damage.  Alpha rays hardly penetrate a sheet of of paper, but cause massive havoc.

Putting a piece of alpha emitter in your pocket is not likely to affect you much, and the gamma rays won't kill you fast.

The danger from plutonium is inhalation.  You get a minute piece of alpha emitter in your lungs.  It cause massive local damage, causing cancer.  Lung cancer has a 90%+ mortality rate.  That is the danger with plutonium.

As for radiation disease:  The only instant-doom variety is the brain syndrome, killing you within a day or so.  This has never actually happened, ASFAIK, because the required levels of radiation are only found at meters fom an atomic bomb.  The most common variety of radiation-related death kills the lining of the intestines, making it impossible to resorb water.  The patient will die of dehydration in a matter of weeks.

As for burning a hole:  if the mass is close to critical, it may get hot.  But it would have to be hot all the time, not just when he touched it.  Not to mention that such quantities of plutonium are bloody heavy.

Stuart herring: That's what I was trying to get at. Cheers.

however the story quoted by darwin sais abour a nuclear waste canister. That suggests that the person wan not dealing with a pure metal sample, but possibly a part of a used fuel rod, which is far more dangerous.

Reading through, it looks as though this is a UL if we go with the plutonium. I find the fuel rod suggestion interesting, though; is it possible that the source simply got a fact wrong?

I suggest that the post as-is be declared a UL and another account of the same incident be sought. Who knows, we might find a version that stands up under scrutiny.

A few facts:
Plutonium normally emits very little radiation: It can emit a gamma but very rarely does. Normal radiation is alpha which can't penetrate paper never mind skin. Incidentally you can find plutonium in smoke detectors...is it likely that a deadly isotope would be sold in shops for £5?

Plutonium is however highly poisonous (like many heavy metals...lead, cadmium, mercury) Plutonium dust instantly turns to plutonium oxide in air. When inhaled this reacts with water in the lungs to form plutonium hydroxide. This will kill you in ~7 days.

The metal does have a bizarre property in that it can change its mass by up to 20%, so a subcritical mass can turn critical. This will not produce a nuclear explosion (you need carefully shaped explosives compressing the plutonium within beryllium lenses). It will, however, produce a hell of a burst of gamma , X rays & high energy which will kill anything within 100 metres or so instantly.

I'm a cancer research scientist who previously served as a medic in the Army. I took several courses at Portam Down. (British army research centre for defence against chemical, biological & nuclear weapons)

On balance the guy probably had a bit of fuel rod or some other nasty.

My knowledge about radiation is pretty much limited to a high school education, so many of these posts are over my head. But not so much over my head that I can see "proffessor" posters are assumming pure radioactive materials, not "nuclear waste" (except Teela). Our smuggling friend may have believed such material to be worth smuggling. He may also have believed the waste canister would make a suspicous bulge. The story does not say how long the guards waited for the A.B.C. to show up. Perhaps by the time ABC got there the rod had burned a hole in the stomach. Those who dismiss the story as UL seem to be overlooking a few details, but then again, I only have a high school education.

WKE235 that's a Machiavellian idea, intentionally damaging
a country by giving 100,000 people radiation sickness! Brrr.

Like most uninformed people, to me the word "plutonium" was enough to evoke dread of mutation and radiation poisoning and whatnot. But actually it's a heck of a lot safer than, say, a pocketful of elemental sodium. Valean's link provides conclusive data that plutonium-239 would not cause acute injury, like that stated in the story. It can cause chronic disease such as lung cancer and leukemia, but one won't suffer these problems by merely holding a chunk against one's stomach.

Health Effects of Plutonium Exposure

Outside of the body, plutonium presents little danger. The most predominant form of radiation it emits - alpha radiation - is incapable of penetrating a sheet of paper and is easily stopped by human skin with no damage to the person. Although the other forms of radiation that plutonium can emit - beta, gamma, and neutron - can present an external hazard to humans, their intensity is low and they do not present great dangers.

If plutonium is eaten accidentally, it is not readily absorbed into the body. Plutonium entering the digestive tract passes through and is expelled before it has time to cause any significant harm.

The main danger from plutonium comes from inhalation. If inhaled, plutonium can become stuck in the tissues of the lungs (if the particles are smaller than one micron - .00004 inches - in diameter). Although the radioactivity of plutonium is not high, the radiation would be concentrated in a single place, and because the plutonium would be in direct contact with sensitive tissue, the alpha particles could damage the lungs (this damage would typically show up as cancer after a period of years).

Plutonium can also be dangerous if it gets into the blood stream. Since very little plutonium would enter the blood stream if plutonium were eaten, the most likely way for plutonium to get into the blood stream is through an open wound. If plutonium were to get in the blood stream, it would tend to concentrate in bones. If enough plutonium were to get to the bones, the alpha radiation could harm the bone marrow that produces the body's blood cells. This could cause leukemia or other bone-marrow related problems. It should be noted that the effects from inhaling plutonium or getting it into the blood stream typically would take many years to occur.

Based on that information, the story would be an Urban Legend.

However, Teela makes a good point, that if it's a spent nuclear rod, it contains plutonium but also a number of other nasty radioactive minerals. Based on the discovery of the nuclear-waste container, I think the author of the story just assumed it was plutonium. Uneducated people (like me, prior to reading this thread) think of the words "uranium" and "plutonium" as virtually interchangeable.

It still remains to be determined whether a chunk of spent nuclear reactor rod would "burn a hole" in someone's stomach. Well, I'll re-write it without the reference to Plutonium, and ask for confirmations. I'd like to see a newspaper write-up of this, or a similar, incident.

Watched this thread for a while- A few more things to contribute.
Pure Pu239 is an alpha emitter. But commercial Pu is always contaminated by a
certain amount of Pu240, which DOES emit neutrons, in fair quantity-
This is why Pu bombs require the much faster implosion assembly
techniques, rather than the "gun" type assembly useable with U235.
Essentially, the stray neutrons will start the bomb going off too early
in the assembly process, causing it to disassemble (blow up!) too early,
and dramatically reducing yields.

The longer a certain amount of Uranium is used in a reactor, the larger
the proportion of (undesirable for weapons purposes) Pu 240 to Pu239.
Pu produced from civilian power reactors is quite high in Pu240, compared to
that made in the reactors run mostly for military weapons material production.
Special weapons designs are required to use such "diverted" civilian produced
Pu, as in the case of a couple of the recent tests conducted by India and
Pakistan to demonstrate their ability to use Pu scavenged from "civilian" type
power reactor fuel rods in weapons.

Chemically separated, mixed isotope derived from used "civilian" power reactor
rods will have a MUCH higher neutron output than you'd expect if you just
look at the textbook stats for pure Pu239-

That being said, all the cases I have seen that appear to be authentic of injury
from stray nuclear materials are related to reactor waste or "lost" radiation
sources intended for nuclear thermo-electric batteries, medical or industrial
X-ray or neutron sources. I'm sure weapons grade material HAS been diverted,
but I don't think by any one amateurish enough to smuggle it in this way!

An excellent source of nuclear weapons related info is:

Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions

If everyone read this (rather long) site completely, I don't think the world's
population would allow such things on the planet. Wouldn't that be nice?

I could swear I saw something like this on the urbanlegends.com web page.
I agree with someone who posted earlier about this, plutonium being an alpha emitter. I was a file clerk in a hospital radiology department and one of the radiologists and I were talking about alpha particles. While I am no expert I do remember the doctor saying that the alpha particles can penetrate soft tissue (internal tissues like lungs and mucus membranes) the particles do not have enough 'power' to go through skin or even a piece of paper.

Radioactivity is sort of like the "juju" black magic effect of the modern age.
Most likely if the story has a grain of truth in it the material stolen was most likely some sort of uranium which was taken out of an abandoned hospital.


Like I said I do not claim to be an expert but that is my understanding of radioactive material. I should run the question by a relative of my g/f who has had military experience with radioactive stuff.

Either someone embellished a real story, or this is simply a legend. For any radioactive to have been that lethal, the sheilding on the container would have to be massive. If it was, lets say, a fuel rod from a reactor containing live and hot material, he would have been dead long before reaching the border carrying it in his backpack or under his arm. The big three factors for determining radioactive exposures are time, distance, and sheilding. The further you are away, the more shielding, and the shorter the exposure all mean less damage to your body. For this story to be true, the shielded container would have been extremely huge to be able to safely hold such a hot sample, or he would have just taken possession of it from someone else who was soon to be dead. Either way, it doesn't add up.

There is one rather major fact being overlooked here - Hungary does not share a border with the Ukraine!! Simple geography makes this story unplausible.

Also, having lived in Hungary for 7 years and crossed the borders into the various surrounding countries many times, I can tell you that I have never once encountered any type of 'radiation-detecting' device. I'm also pretty certain that Hungary does not have the resources to equip each border station with such a device. Some of these border stations are staffed with two or maybe three people and have very limited facilities.

I am actually quite shocked that this story has made it this far - given the basic facts of georgraphy.

Were the story to focus around a country bordering Ukraine, I would also find it implausible from a resource perspective. It is highly unlikely that any of the countries around the Ukraine could afford such equipment at all border crossings.

As well, most Eastern European countries border crossings will require a careful scrutiny from the country you are leaving and the one you are entering - a 'suspicious' character leaving a bordering country would have to deal with two sides of border police, not just one.

There is one rather major fact being overlooked here - Hungary does not share a border with the Ukraine!! Simple geography makes this story unplausible.

Also, having lived in Hungary for 7 years and crossed the borders into the various surrounding countries many times, I can tell you that I have never once encountered any type of 'radiation-detecting' device. I'm also pretty certain that Hungary does not have the resources to equip each border station with such a device. Some of these border stations are staffed with two or maybe three people and have very limited facilities.

I am actually quite shocked that this story has made it this far - given the basic facts of georgraphy.

Were the story to focus around a country bordering Ukraine, I would also find it implausible from a resource perspective. It is highly unlikely that any of the countries around the Ukraine could afford such equipment at all border crossings.

As well, most Eastern European countries border crossings will require a careful scrutiny from the country you are leaving and the one you are entering - a 'suspicious' character leaving a bordering country would have to deal with two sides of border police, not just one.

I'm from Hungary. And yes, Hungary shares a border with Ukraine.
Altough, I never heard of the story, smuggle of nuclear material from Ukraine has been a concern of Hungary and this particular border is treated differently.

It needn't even have been a radiation burn, but a chemical one. Radioactive isotopes can still undergo chemical reactions, and it could have somehow reacted to form an acid or base. This combined with radiation, is a burning fait accompli.

Radioactivity is sort of like the "juju" black magic effect of the modern age.
Most likely if the story has a grain of truth in it the material stolen was most likely some sort of uranium which was taken out of an abandoned hospital.

Uranium is even less radioactive than Plutonium. Its an even weaker alpha emitter & is chemically very stable. Caesium-137 & Cobalt-60 ARE used in hospitals...both are extremely potent gamma emitters and are more than capable of burning a hole through someone. I've heard a story (from a medical physicist in my hospital) about an engineer who touched a cobalt 60 source for a few seconds & lost 3 fingers. No one would leave such a thing lying around though & you'd need several tonnes of lead to safely sheild a hospital sized source. However if it had been a cobalt source then the border guards wouldn't have survived the incident either & we'd be getting far more confirmation than this.

It needn't even have been a radiation burn, but a chemical one. Radioactive isotopes can still undergo chemical reactions, and it could have somehow reacted to form an acid or base. This combined with radiation, is a burning fait accompli.

Hmmmmm. Plutonium (like most other metals) instantly reacts with oxygen so that any chunk of it is covered in plutonium oxide to a depth of 3 or 4 atoms. If you add PuO to water (sweat) some of it will turn to alkali Plutonium Hydroxide PuOH. This could cause some skin irritation but it would be no worse than a kitchen bleach burn. (Unless you breathe it in PuOH in the lungs will kill you agonisingly over a week)

Well, you can very easily expose this story UL without even discussing radiologic impacts of nuclear waste on human bodies.

1. "the threat of nuclear smugglers from ex-USSR"
How do you imagine nuclear smuggle works? Hordes of smugglers, crooks and sneak-thiefs busily carrying uranium and strontzium in bagpacks across the border? That it is necessary or even possible to sieve border traffic for radioactive material? I mean, we are not talking about vodka, cigarettes or guns.

2.: "Geiger-Muller detector gate"
There is no such device. If it would exist, it surely would be too expensive to equip every border post with, especially in Hungary. If it would be affordable, it still would be pretty useless unless it is big enough allowing also cars and trucks to pass. And when I passed the border last summer, I didn't even see a common Geiger counter, not to say staff skilled to use it. And still, even if radioactivity in some way was possible to be controlled at the border posts, it would be much easier to pass the border between the posts, and be uncontrolled.

3. "people were running for their lives"
Yes, border police ran away, leaving the border post unattended, while at the same time wide-area access roads were closed and traffic grinded to a standstill on both Hungarian and Ukrainian side.

4. "The Hungarian army dispatched an ABC (Atomic-Biological-Chemical) reconnaissance vehicle"
I doubt there are very many ABC cars in the Hungarian army, and if, certainly they don't have them handy near the border to appear within a reasonable amount of time.

5. "a large wound burnt into his stomach"
This was already discussed in detail.

6. "a discarded nuclear waste canister"
And again, how do you expect commonly used nuclear waste canisters to look like? Campbell's best Nuclear Waste in cans, 250 ml? I'd assume places where nuclear waste comes up will use industrial containers like barrels. Additionallly, when handling dangerous material, heavily coated. So, either the perpetrator rolls an unobtrusive, 50 or 100 pound object before him along the road until he comes near the border, where he decides to stop, open the container and smear a handful of whatsoever illegal material on duct tape to put around his body, or he opens the original container earlier to decant the material into something smaller und more unappropriate.


How ever you look at it, this story has for too many open questions and inconsistencies to even come near to truth.

Peter P.
Point 1) Nuclear smuggling is a huge problem, Plutonium (300g was the largest amount) has been seized in germany on several occasions this year. God knows what has made it out via. Chechnya/Kasakstan

Point 2) gieger counters are relatively cheap & easy to use. Most New York subway stations have radiation monitoring devices. A patient recieving radioactive Iodine (to treat a thyroid condition) set off the monitors and was rather brutally strip searched by the cops.

Point 4) I'm not sure about the Hungarians, but the Czechs are the worlds experts in monitoring NBC (or ABC if you wish) weapons. They provided the UK with 8 FUCH's equipped for this purpose & have sent NBC experts to the Gulf for both gulf wars. Czech NBC monitoring equipment is superior to that used by US forces.

Point 6) The Russians are very careless with nuclear fuel rods. They nearly had an explosion (not a full atomic blast) because fuel rods dumped in a ditch by a power plant decayed to something less stable & reached a semi-critical mass. If this stuff was plutonium (unlikely) a sheet of blotting paper would be adequate sheilding. Its container would be of an appropriate weight & size and easily carried.

However I think this story is an urban legend....there IS too many big holes in it....including the one in the guys stomach (a very unusual injury)

Plutonium? I doubt it, since it's a low radiation emitter. Sorry, but this one looks like another UL.

peter

I didn't just mean plutonium acid/bases, but also any by-products of plutonium decay that react with air/water to become acids or bases.

How radioactive are the most common by-products of plutonium decay?

This is a great link: Plutonium decay products. As plutonium has 15 different isotopes (I only knew of 3 prior to looking this stuff up), varying in weight from 232 to 246 the decay chain is very complex, however the majority of Plutonium is 239 which decays to Uranium 235. The most important thing to remember is that Plutonium 239 has a half life of 24,000 years & Uranium 235 has a half life or 704,000,000 years!!!! so there really isn't going to be much in the way of decay products in a sample of pure plutonium. As a general rule (at least for alpha & beta particles), the longer the half life, the less radioactive something is (as a particle is only released at the moment of decay). The isotopes at the bottom of the chain (like Polonium 215 with a half life of 1.78 milliseconds is pretty hot), but most of the intermediates are almost inert..... youd get more radioactive exposure breathing the air in Aberdeen than holding these elements.

If this story is true(ish) though, I'd expect the "radioactive material" to be a bit of fuel rod or something similar...... that would be a cocktail of uranium & plutonium plus small amounts of really nasty stuff like the shorter lived isotopes of thorium, radon, polonium etc. Not something I'd tape to my chest.

Edit: I had a thought...this is extremely implausible for a number of reason's but not totally impossible. Weapons grade plutonium can change its density (and therefore, to an extent its relative mass) by up to 20% depending on temperature. It can do this spontaneously, so its always kept in quantities well below critical mass. If you were to hold a lump of plutonium just below critical mass to the skin it MAY increase in density & reach a critical-mass. In effect you'd replicate what happens in a reactor.... you'd get some fission, generating massive amounts of heat plus alpha & gamma radiation, X-rays & possibly high energy neutron release. It would be almost instantly fatal, but the chances of this happening are extremely slim, not least because no one would ever store enough plutonium in one canister for this to happen.

Edited by peter, 21 May 2003 - 05:34 AM.

Weapons grade plutonium can change its density … by up to 20% depending on temperature. … so its always kept in quantities well below critical mass. If you were to hold a lump of plutonium just below critical mass to the skin it MAY increase in density & reach a critical-mass. In effect you'd replicate what happens in a reactor.... you'd get some fission, generating massive amounts of heat plus alpha & gamma radiation, X-rays & possibly high energy neutron release. It would be almost instantly fatal, but the chances of this happening are extremely slim, not least because no one would ever store enough plutonium in one canister for this to happen.

Everything expands when heated and contracts when cooled (unless going through a phase change like water-to-ice or back). Wouldn't this mean that warming Pu would cause it to become LESS dense but cooling would cause it to approach critical density?

That would be logical, but I THINK (I'm not a nuclear physicist) that plutonium, being a man-made element behaves oddly. I know in the early days of the atomic bomb programme people were killed by sub-critical masses of plutonium changing their density & giving out intense bursts of heat & radiation.

Heat expansion & cold contraction are associated with the higher or lower level of atomic action (vibration if you will). This is the basis for Boyle's(?) Gas Law: PV=nrT (go easy on me, I have not taken any of those advanced physics courses). When dealing with a non-compressible substance (AFAIK all solids and the vast majority of liquids) a similar rule would apply without the Pressure component.

Pu is created from Uranium. Does Uranium exhibit any REVERSED expansion/contraction properties?

I could understand expansion coefficients which would cause an exaggerated contraction on dropping a few degrees which could significantly affect the density of the material, but I find the concept of a substance contracting when heated to be well beyond my comprehension.

I'm not aware of Uranium having any strange properties at all, however its a natural substance whereas Plutonium is most certainly not natural.

I could understand expansion coefficients which would cause an exaggerated contraction on dropping a few degrees which could significantly affect the density of the material, but I find the concept of a substance contracting when heated to be well beyond my comprehension.

Mine too. Ministry of defense has some info on it:

Plutonium, the 94th element in the Periodic Table, can be produced from uranium-238 in a nuclear reactor. It is a unique metal with very unusual properties. Consequently, investigating its nature and attempting to understand the relevant physics and metallurgy is very challenging. In addition to being fissile and radioactive, plutonium is toxic and chemically reactive, meaning that special handling techniques are required.

Relatively small changes in temperature, pressure or chemistry can alter the electronic configuration of plutonium, and hence its physical properties. One particularly abnormal characteristic is that solid plutonium displays 6 different phases when heated from room temperature prior to melting at 650 oC (see chart, right). Each phase is distinct and has, for example, a different crystal structure, density and resistivity to its counterparts. This can present enormous difficulties in fabricating and storing plutonium

The site is primarily concerned with long term storage of warheads....I think a lot of this data is classified. Either way I doubt the guy had stolen all the plutonium in a nuclear warhead.... its the only way I can think he'd get an almost critical mass of Pu from a single container.

peter,

Thank you for your succinct source.

I had posted as part of my reasoning

Everything expands when heated and contracts when cooled (unless going through a phase change like water-to-ice or back).

The reply that

One particularly abnormal characteristic is that solid plutonium displays 6 different phases when heated from room temperature prior to melting at 650 oC (see chart, right). Each phase is distinct and has, for example, a different crystal structure, density and resistivity to its counterparts.

So in the end, Pu is going through those phase changes which act counter to expectation just like water going through its phase change from solid to liquid or back is counter normal.

I stand corrected.

Dart I'm a molecular biologist by training, so my knowledge of plutonium's phase changes is pretty limited..... I THOUGHT I was right but wasn't sure....I think I originally read about plutonium changing in density in a Tom Clancy...... as a rule he's quite ignorant of biology (especially Ebola), but tends to be extermely accurate about nuclear weapons (makes me wonder what he did in the air-force... the one paragraph biography in the front of his books never says).

Anyway, back to the thread: The fact that plutonium COULD change in phase, & therefore COULD release an intense burst of gamma radiation + heat perhaps makes this story a little easier to believe. Obviously the exact critical mass of plutonium is classified knowledge, but its around 6-8kg. Theoretically he could hide that on his body..... 6kg of plutonium would only be about the size of a baseball. It wouldn't need much shielding, being (usually) an alpha emitter, yet if it was elderly warhead material it could have started to decay & become a little less stable than usual. About the only source of this material would be from a warhead....the soviets have scrapped thousands of them & russian security is a bit slack.

I don't think this story is true, but I can't say its impossible anymore.