Peter H.

Rassmann Page 1 of 4

Example of possible biological effects of (reactor-) antineutrinos

This is just an example of the hypothetical effect of reactor-neutrinos on biological

cells. It should be noted, that the suggested reaction in the example is not possible
for solar neutrinos, that is has been discussed already in theoretical papers, and that
it has not been measured yet in practice.

I say this as a precaution against common arguments, which would run along these
lines: “Everything on earth is being drenched with solar neutrino, and they do no
harm. So why should I get worried about some reactor neutrinos?” This argument is a
misconception in several ways.

- First, reactor neutrinos are the anti-particles of solar neutrinos, and can do
different reactions.

- Second, the exorbitant solar neutrino flux and its interactions with matter is
hard to come by, experimentally: It was originally thought that neutrinos would
open a path to look right down into the core of the sun, but nowadays, it
becomes more and more evident that one has to take both the neutrino
production (deep in the sun) and the neutrino propagation thru matter into
account (while they travel out of the sun). And it is a messy situation
experimentally if one wants to confirm both the radiation source power and the
radiation’s dimming on the way to earth at the same time.

- And third, if the high solar neutrino flux would be real, all sensitive materials on
earth would have been disintegrated by now, and the biological life, if affected,
would have found a way to protect against it, about the way that life has found
ways to protect against a common sunburn.

Compared to the sun, nuclear reactors are in existence for a very short time only.

Biological Cell

DNA

Anti – Neutrino

Nuclear
Reactor
Radiation

Phone: +47 172 4423637 e-mail: peter_rassmann@yahoo.com printed 17.06.2008

Peter H. Rassmann Page 2 of 4

The nuking of a P53

Pix from http://xray0.princeton.edu/~phil/Facility/PresentationGraphics.html ,

Information about p53 is available in Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53_%28protein%29

P 53 in cells is a tumour suppressor

enzyme. It contains one zinc atom.
Here is a picture of p53 in contact with
DNA. On the right, you see the p53
tumour suppressor. P53 is, among
other things, responsible for
programmed cell death, which means
that it’ll kill a cell that is no longer
needed, preventing it from causing
tumour growth (ask a biologist for
details).

Now where is the beaf? To begin with,

we need to enlarge the picture a bit, as
shown here on the right. The grey ball
that’s hiding in the centre within the
p53 enzyme, that’s a zinc atom with its
ligands.

Let’s enlarge a bit more.

Here we go. The zinc is shown with it’s

ligands. Zinc is essential for the
workings of the p53 tumour
suppressor, as has been shown by
trying to replace it with some other
atom (it mostly didn’t work). In this
picture, for clarity, the DNA is not
shown any more.

Now, zinc in nature is a mix of several stable isotopes, like Zinc-64 with 48.6 %, and
Zinc.-66,67,68 and 70 sharing the rest to get the 100 % natural abundance.

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Peter H. Rassmann Page 3 of 4

However, Zinc-64 is capable, by energy considerations of it’s binding energy, of

doing a “double electron capture”, turn itself into a Ni-64 and release energy by doing
so, about 1096.0 keV. This compares to a ionisation energy of, for example,
hydrogen of 0.0136 keV. That means that the energy of a zinc double beta decay
could ionise about 60,000 hydrogen atoms.

The double electron capture of zinc would look like this, as a formula:

64
Zn→ 64 Ni + 2ν + 1096keV .

So, if the zinc within a p53 happens to be a Zn-64 isotope and that happens to decay
in this fashion, it would take along about 60,000 hydrogen atoms (it would ionise
them and thus probably rip them out of the enzyme).

Fortunately, the Zn-64 doesn’t do a double electron capture in reality. It has never
been observed so far. And the reason it doesn’t do it is indicated by the “double” –
the process would have to proceed by two subsequent steps, with a single electron
capture for each step. The first one would turn Zn-64 into a Copper (Cu-64), like this:

64
Zn + 579keV → 64 Cu + ν .

The Cu-64 would subsequently decay into the Ni-64, but the whole process doesn’t
happen, because the Zn-64 needs some additional 579 keV of energy to do the first
step and turn itself into a Cu-64.

So this doesn’t happen in nature, at least, it has not been observed yet.

Things may be different if reactor-neutrinos (anti-neutrinos) are around. The formula

to turn the zinc atom into a nickel atom and release energy, in the presence of
reactor-neutrinos, looks like this:

64
Zn + v→ 64 Ni + ν + 1096keV

On the first glance, this looks like a two step reaction, too. Acutally that’s one way to
explain it – if it could indeed happen. This has to be found out: In this case, the
incoming reactor-neutrino could carry enough initial energy to do the first step, and
this initial energy would be released, together with the 1096 keV, in the second step.

In addition to that, the above reaction could possibly proceed in one step only, if one
would allow the following: The incoming reactor-neutrino interacts with the whole
atom of Zn-64 and turn itself into the outgoing neutrino, by a so called neutral current
interaction. This is shown in the diagram*).

v ν
Z0

Zn-64 Ni-64
Whole neutral atom ?!

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Peter H. Rassmann Page 4 of 4

That’ll be the end of the P53 tumour suppressor enzyme.

Even if this process doesn’t happen very often, since a human body has about 100
trillion cells (1014), if one atom of zinc-64 in the central position of the p53 enzyme
suffers a hit like that, the respective cell may cause a cancer growth – however you’d
better ask a biologist on this (for example, if this defect of a cell would be inherited to
subsequent cells?).

Even if you would know about the probability of all reactions of reactor-neutrinos with
matter, it would still be hard to predict if there are biological consequences. The fact
as it stands right know is that one knows very little about the interactions of neutrinos
with matter – both for solar and reactor neutrinos – and one cannot predict the
consequences for living cells and higher organismen.

That’s why biological and biochemical experiments with neutrino radiation are
required to get some insight into the subject – before hundreds of new commercial
reactors will be constructed.

*) The second hypothetical way, as described in the diagram above, assumes an anti-neutrino that
0 0
turns into a neutrino while exchanging a Z with a whole atom. Usually, a Z is considered to interact
0
among more elementary particles, like quarks and leptons, but if a Z behaves like a photon, in a way,
then why shouldn’ t it start to “see” larger structures, at low energies, like a photon does?

Phone: +47 172 4423637 e-mail: peter_rassmann@yahoo.com printed 17.06.2008