A Quote by John Gofman

Plutonium is so hazardous that if you had a fully developed nuclear economy with breeder reactors fueled with plutonium, and you managed to contain the plutonium 99.99 percent perfectly, it would still cause somewhere between 140,000 and 500,000 extra lung-cancer fatalities each year.

John Gofman

Quote Topics

Between Cancer Cause Contain Developed Each Each Year Economy Extra Fueled Fully Had Hazardous Lung Nuclear Percent Perfectly Plutonium Somewhere Still Would Year

Quote Author

John Gofman
American - Chemist
September 21, 1918 - August 15, 2007

There was a concept a long time ago that you would do a different type of reactor called a "fast reactor," that would make a bunch of another element called plutonium, and then you would pull that out, and then you would burn that. That's called "breeding" in a fast reactor. That is bad because plutonium is nuclear weapons material. It's messy. The processing you have to get through is not only environmentally difficultly, it's extremely expensive.

Bill Gates

The concept of this so-called "TerraPower reactor" is that you, in the same reactor, you both burn and breed. So, instead of making plutonium and then extracting it, we take uranium - the 99.3 percent that you normally don't do anything with - we convert that, and we burn it.

Bill Gates

Our flame is taking the normal depleted uranium - the 99.3 percent that's cheap as heck, and there's a pile of it sitting in Paducah, Kentucky that's enough to power the United States for hundreds and hundreds of years. You're taking that and you are converting it to plutonium - and then you're burning that.

Bill Gates

Chips of plutonium are twinkling in every lung.

Kate Bush

Unlike uranium, plutonium was created in an American lab in 1940, but scientists soon realized that it could produce even wilder chain reactions and even bigger explosions. In fact, fearing another country would create it, too, the American government went to great lengths to keep even the existence of plutonium a secret.

Sam Kean

Researches at Yale found a connection between brain cancer and work environment. The No. 1 most dangerous job for developing brain cancer? Plutonium hat model.

Jimmy Fallon

I believe we should be investing in the potential of nuclear technology based on thorium, to end the use of plutonium and lead to much safer nuclear power plants, less toxic nuclear waste, and less opportunities for nuclear weapons proliferation.

Joe Sestak

I, who had been in favour of nuclear energy for generating electricity ... I suddenly realised that anybody who has a nuclear reactor can extract the plutonium from the reactor and make nuclear weapons, so that a country which has a nuclear reactor can, at any moment that it wants to, become a nuclear weapons power. And I, right from the beginning, have been terribly worried by the existence of nuclear weapons and very much against their use.

Mark Oliphant

Once we open the door to the plutonium economy, we expose ourselves to absolutely terrible, horrifying risks from these people.

David R. Brower

My estimate is that about 94,000 cancer fatalities for the future are being induced with each year of medical diagnostic X-rays (in US).

John Gofman

Almost all of the governments have agreed that they will not acquire nuclear weapons and that they will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor their commercial and research nuclear power operations to ensure that nuclear materials - highly enriched uranium and plutonium - are not diverted to use in weapons.

John Burroughs

Teachers don't need as much as $140,000 a year, ... But, perhaps some senators don't need $140,000 a year either.

John McCain

We know North Korea has the plutonium that can go into the bomb.

Mohamed ElBaradei

My job was to produce plutonium that was used for atomic bomb.

Mordechai Vanunu

There are many different kinds of radioactive waste and each has its own half-life so, just to be on the safe side and to simplify matters, I base my calculations on the worst one and that's plutonium.

David R. Brower

My greatest pleasure is still flying private. I spend between $300,000 to $500,000, depending on my year, on flying private.