Radium storage

Martland HS, Conlon P, Knef JP. 1925. Some unrecognized dangers in the use and handling of radioactive substances with especial reference to the storage of insoluble products of radium and mesothorium in the reticulo-endothelial system. JAMA 85 1769-1775. 

A dysequilibrium between the activity of the Th, Ra, and Th in foodstuffs has been reported. The Th content of vegetables and cereals is generally lower as compared to Th. This is due to the high radium bioavailability and the short halftimes of Th and Ra. Storage time of foodstuffs and the growing period of the vegetables are most important for the thorium isotopic dysequilibrium (Lauria et al. 

The attempts to separate our artificial radium isotopes from barium in this way were unsuccessful, Hahn would explain in his Nobel Prize lecture no enrichment of the radium was obtained. It was natural to ascribe this lack of success to the exceptionally low intensity of our preparations. It was always a question of merely a few thousands of atoms, which could only be detected as individual particles by the Geiger-Muller counter. Such a small number of atoms could be carried away by the great excess of inactive barium without any increase or decrease being perceptible. To check that possibility they retrieved from storage a known radium isotope they often worked with, the isotope they called mesothorium. They diluted it to match the pale radioactivity of their few thousand atoms of Ra-III, then ran it through barium precipitation and fractionation. It separated away cleanly from the barium. Their technique was not at fault. 

The Lab-to-Lab (or site-to-site) component involves projects between U.S. DOE national laboratories and Minatom research institutes and industrial sites in Russia. The corresponding proposed lead laboratories on this effort are the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the V.G. Khlopin Radium Institute (KRI) in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Lab-to-Lab program will promote improved safety methodologies and their application to nuclear facilities for excess HEU and plutonium storage and disposition and improve training for facility operators. 

In the closure of an open pit, confinement of the environmentally unstable material, such as pyrite or radioactive materials can be achieved by storage below the water table (Fig. 6). For example at the Wismut uranium mine in Germany radioactive and sulphide-rich waste is stored below the water table preventing extensive further breakdown. Above this is a buffer zone and low-level waste and a clay barrier which acts to reduce oxygen and water permeability and also absorb any radium emission (Chapman Hockley 1996 Hockley et al. 1997). 

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