Dickie, I expect that KAEP hasn't a clue about much beyond his own patent opinions. One of his/her more splendid ideas involves Australia in launching rockets from the mountains of New Guinea to establish energy transmitters between the orbits of Mercury and Venus, to harvest solar energy to save our planet. Yes, and KAEP alleges he/she knows a lot about thermodynamics.

As for responding any more to KAEP, I am saving my breath. With persistence, I could probably teach a budgie to count to 5, but no-one's ever going to teach the dear little thing to add and subtract.

Radon 222 causes about 32000 cancer deaths per year in the USA, mostly from radon trapped in houses and in miners (not only uranium miners) working underground.

As Radon 222 has a half life of less than 4 hours, and its most toxic daughters of less than 1 hr, and nuclear plants hold the gas for 100s of half lives, unless you work directly in the uranium cycle, the chance of Joe Bloggs getting cancer from the Radon 222 emitted from the nuclear industry is probably of the order of getting lung cancer from someone smoking outside 100km away.

Radon does not stick to dust particles, only some of its daughters (<1hr half life). There is more risk to your health from inhaling the dust than the radon.

The risks of the nuclear industry are well enough documented without having to make up any.

Radon 222 causes about 32000 cancer deaths per year in the USA, mostly from radon trapped in houses and in miners (not only uranium miners) working underground and this is constant background radiation and has ZIP to do with proposed safe Australian PBR (Condom jacketed)nuclear reactors or any safe proposed nuclear research programs.

Effete scare campaigns as a distraction from Howard's penny-pinching, immigraphantic, up-the-USA-garden-path-economic-collapse Fiscal mismanagement are the Libs's current blitzkrieg stratagem so Shadow Minister would have to be a Liberal supporter IMHO.

Current unsafe yellowcake export contracts which Shadow is too weak to ever stop must be supplanted by safe PBR export industries with strong research into oceanic subduction zone disposal of PBR pebbles that will have additional plastic coatings to suppress any gaseous RAs escaping.

The chance of Joe Bloggs getting cancer from the Radon or Krypton emitted from the nuclear industry is probably of the order of getting lung cancer from someone smoking outside 100km away.

Radon & Krypton do not stick to dust particles. There is more risk to your health from inhaling the dust.

The risks of the nuclear industry in Australia today are well enough documented. Although ridiculously insignificant compared to human fight-to-the-death overpopulation and defecation of the planet, all Nuclear industry risks can be reduced and in some cases, totally removed.

But without a Total-Nuclear-Industries policy in Australia, which must remain effectively always under public (NOT PRIVATE) control, those documented risks will never be REDUCED.

Shadow Minister

I agree that it is the radon progeny which adheres to dust particles. However, without a parent, there is no progeny. The daughters of Rn222 are the radionuclides responsible for lung cancer.

When radon gas is allowed to build up in an enclosed space, such as a mine shaft or basement, the radioactive hazard increases enormously because of the build-up of radon progeny.

Conversely, when radon gas migrates through the atmosphere, the solid radon progeny are deposited on the soil and water below, entering into the food chain and hence the bodies of birds, animals, fish and insects.

"As Radon 222 has a half life of less than 4 hours, and its most toxic daughters of less than 1 hr,....."

Well you get a FAIL from me for that blunder, Shadow.

Polonium 210 has a half-life of 138 days

Radon 222 (Rn222) has a half life of 3.8 days.

If at first you don't succeed, why go on and make a fool of yourself?

Dickie,

Ignorance is bliss and if youv'e got it you flaunt it. Obviously neither reading nor maths are your strong points.

I said the "most toxic" progeny i.e. the ones recognised as actually causing death in the general populace. The very short half life of the 4 most toxic progeny mean that radon inhaled has a high concentration of radiation in the lungs from which nearly all deaths occur

After the most radioactive isotopes decay, they become lead 210 with a half life of 22 years which comparitively is inert, so the amount of polonium 210 is so small that its effect is not measureable.

As for ground take up, radon is continuously emitted from the ground in quantities that would dwarf any present or future emissions from human involvement, and even that is dwarfed by other radio activity from solar radiation, carbon 14, etc.

The scope of the threat is covered in the following link (which does not use too many big words) or maybe Kaep could give you some pointers.

http://www.cheec.uiowa.edu/misc/radon_occ.pdf

So, KAEP, ("Nuclear can't harm us and it can save us from the sweeping disorder that will arise when petrol reaches >$5/litre in less than a decade") where's YOUR plutonium powered Delorean?

http://www.VoteNuclearFree.net