[ RadSafe ] How tough is it to build a dirty bomb?

[Stewart Farber]

Dr. Cohen writes below about a dirty bomb attack. As he notes the goal is fear and chaos, and:

"This could only work once, because when the public recognizes that no 
one was harmed by the plutonium, it would be a very useful public 
information event".

Of course the problem in the public determining that "no one was harmed" [ by even a mBq in a so-called "dirty bomb" ] would, according to those who would want to capitalize on the event to advance their own agenda, claim that epidemiological studies carried out over the lifetime of all individuals possibly exposed initially or due to residual contamination were necessary. [Excuse the preceding run on sentence, but I read a log of German lit in college, and got used to verbs being at the end of loooog sentences]. :-)

And then once the "required" epidemiological studies were completed [ one study would clearly not be enough, right? ] the results would be disputed and debated ad nauseum by countless scientific, public, environmental anti-nuclear activist,  regulatory, and legislative bodies who have a vested interest in the issue. 

Consider the case of the Chernobyl accident. Claims of people "killed" by the accident range from the 32 acute deaths among emergency responders, to countless millions due to trivial radiation exposure and residual global contamination,  integrated over all time if one listens to scaremongers like a Bertell or a Caldicott [ or our radsafe favorite the "Tooth Fairy" project]. 

Stewart Farber, MSPH

Farber Medical Solutions, LLC
Linac, Imaging, and HP Equipment Brokerage

Bridgeport, CT 06604



[203] 441-8433 
farber at farber.info
===========================

--- On Fri, 2/11/11, Bernard L. Cohen <blc at pitt.edu> wrote:




From: Bernard L. Cohen <blc at pitt.edu>
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] How tough is it to build a dirty bomb?
To: "The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List" <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
Date: Friday, February 11, 2011, 1:04 PM

On 2/10/2011 4:53 PM, Franz Schönhofer wrote:
>   Since the aim of such an "attack" would be to raise fear and
> chaos the amount and the concentration of such radioactive substances is
> hardly of any importance. Headlines in the mass media like "Plutonium bomb
> spreads deadly radioactive material in downtown...." would be enough to
> create chaos - whether it were a mBq or
 some GBq.
> 
        This could only work once, because when the public recognizes that no one was harmed by the plutonium, it would be a very useful public information event

-- Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept., University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245  Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc at pitt.edu  web site: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc

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