Brief Analysis of the Simulative Plutonium Aerosol Source-Term in the Circumstance of High Explosive Detonation

Abstract

The plutonium material in weapons grade nuclear device would be aerosolized and dispersed into the atmosphere if the device was involved in a high explosive detonation. It is significant to investigate the environmental and public hazard caused by the possible dispersion of plutonium. The original work is to determine the source terms of plutonium aerosol in certain nuclear accident scenario. In such scenario the inhalation of plutonium aerosols is the main human hazard source. Only the plutonium aerosols with aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm are respirable and may ultimately lead to fatal human death. The field detonation test with plutonium by U.S. government is reviewed and the results indicate that for expected high explosive detonation scenario the plutonium source terms are 100 % aerosolization and 20 % respirable fraction. In order to find the aerosolized similarity of plutonium and several conventional metals, two detonation experiments in which the stannum foil and the vanadium powder are used as the replacement of plutonium respectively have been conducted by our group. After the detonation the metal aerosols are collected and analyzed. It has been found that the metallic powder is much easier to be aerosolized than the foil while the integrated aerosol source terms (respirable mass fractions) of stannum and vanadium are quite different with plutonium. Unlike the integrated aerosol data, the differential source terms (cumulative mass fractions via particle size) of the simulative samples are partially similar with plutonium.