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

[Maury Siskel]

What the future might bring:
And each university and government lab participating in the studies 
would be canvassed and scanned for contamination.  Then all the paper 
used to analyze and report the results would be centrally collected in 
Omaha. All known tooth fairies would be collected and made a part of the 
cargo. Next the transportation casks would be prepared and loaded onto 
Officially Approved Trucks for  the westward movement. Then amid great 
ado, they would arrive for the approved burial ceremony. Finally,  the 
contaminated trucks, fairies, and paper would be sealed into safe 
perpetuity, never to be read again, inside Yucca Mountain.

Geologists in 4052 will marvel when their oil drilling rig turns up 
these amazing finds -- those clods back in 2011 actually had some crude 
beginnings of science ...   sigh ... too bad they made such little use 
of it
Best,
Maury&Dog
===========================

Stewart Farber wrote:

>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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