man can, and it's ad infinitum because plutonium has a half-life of 24,400 years and d lasts for r a llong time. but the other thing is ththat the bodydy thinks plutonium is iron--it't's an irn analalogue--so it's stored in the liver, where it causes liver cancer. it's stored in the bone marrow to cause--to produce hemoglobin in the red blood cells, but it causes leukemia or bone cancer. it crosses the placenta into the developing embryo--which lets nothing through it, incidentally, except plutonium and a few other nasties. it's stored in the testiticle, t too. so it's s a ubiquitous, really dangerous isotope, and from the time they discovered it in the manhattan project, they knew its dangers. >> does plutonium come only from nuclear weapons testing, or is there a risk of it escaping from nuclearar power plants asas wel? >>>> it's nnot emitted by powerr plants roroutinely. routinely, power plants emit radioactive elements all the time. tritium-- they y cannot prevent tritium escapingng--highly carcinogenic. it's--hydrogen--radioactive hydrogen, h3, highly carcinogenic. that's probably wha