[ RadSafe ] Government eyes Supertanker for dirty duty

[blhamrick at aol.com]

Whoa, wait!  A nuclear device is orders of magnitude more significant than any dirty bomb could be.

A dirty bomb is just ordinary explosives conjoined to radioactive material in order to disperse said material.  A nuclear device unleashes the energy in fissionable material and can (if effectively designed and detonated) cause far more damage than conventional explosions.  They're really not comparable events.

Barbara L. Hamrick
------Original Message------
From: Doug Huffman
Sender: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl
To: Brennan, Mike (DOH)
To: radsafe at radlab.nl
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Government eyes Supertanker for dirty duty
Sent: Aug 20, 2009 5:10 PM

Have we that may know merely dirty from 'bomb' ever put a sharp pencil 
on one?

I find it hard to believe that an effectively dirty bomb is much 
different from a nuclear device or that a practical dirty bomb is 
particularly dirty at all.  'Practical' constrained by mass, specific 
activity and so on.

Brennan, Mike (DOH) wrote:

> For dirty bombs, the first thing to do is keep ignorant policy makers from doing stupid things, like requiring wounded people be deconned before they are treated, or ordering evacuations when shelter in place is called for.  As for deconning big chunks of a city; fire hoses and the storm drain system will be more useful than airplanes full of hair gel.
>
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