the core temperature at the proper level. When the plant must be must be shut down the control rods are lowered all the way back into the core. That brings the chain reaction to a standstill. The core cools, and steam is no longer produced (23-24). In all nuclear reactions use uranium and produce some plutonium.Since nuclear reactions produce a considerable amount of plutonium there are considerable hazards that come along with it. Nader and Abbotts, two men who have a great amount of experience in the nuclear industry, comment that:Plutonium's major dangers include the fact that it is weapons-grade material, that it is highly toxic, and it is extremely long-lasting: it will take 24,000 years for half of it to decay. In addition to the possibility that plutonium could contaminate the environment or the population in an accident, there is also the danger that a terrorist group could steal plutonium for the purposes of fashioning an illicit nuclear weapon. (63)Plutonium-239 is a man-made reactor by-product which emits highly energetic alpha particles. Even though alpha particles can be stopped by a piece of paper that can be very dangerous to tissue if they are taken into the body by ingestion or inhalation. Expressing extreme concern over the issue of plutonium getting into the human body Nader and Abbotts write:Experiments with dogs show that the inhalation of as little as three millionths of a gram of Pu-239 can cause lung cancer. John Gofman has reported that plutonium and other alpha-emitters, such as curium and americium [other products of a nuclear reaction], when in a form that cannot readily be dissolved by body fluids, 'represent an inhalation hazard in a class some five orders of magnitude [100,000 times] more potent, weight for weight, than potent chemical carcinogens.' The fact that plutonium has a very long half-life, 24,000 years, makes it one of the deadliest elements known and one of the most difficult to manag...
