[ RadSafe ] Shielding of DEVICES

[franz.schoenhofer at chello.at]

Dear RADSAFErs,

I also hope that you are all well and not having been scared to death yet by a few RADSAFE scaremongers, who insist that the USA will be deleted by terrorists and radiological weapons of mass destruction and that therefore billions of dollars should be invested to reduce the probability by a factor of 10 or 100 (from zero), further enhancing the income of certain makers of surveillance equipment.

Conventional terrorism is more than well known in the area of this world, which you call "other countries". Joe, you obviously do not read  papers, at least not international ones, otherwise you would know how many people are killed in terroristic attacks - in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Pákistan, in Sudan, South America, Africa. You do not think of the millions of people and children starving to death on this planet; not the women raped during thzose local wars, men and children killed. How can you dare to put forward for the second time the priority of the USA population to be prevented from any - practically impossible radiological attack? What about the "boats" you describe coming up the Themse, the Rhine, the Danube, Yang tsi and other far east rivers? What about the Amazonas? 

Come on, Joe, read more international news papers and think about what is written there. The same recommendation goes to the "rest" of RADSAFErs.

My very best wishes,

Franz

? 





---- JPreisig at aol.com schrieb:
> Dear Radsafe:
>  
>      From:   _jpreisig at aol.com_ (mailto:jpreisig at aol.com)     .
>  
>  
>      Hope you all are well.
>  
>      Of necessity, the USA and other nations are  spending a fair amount of 
> money, job effort on 
> national security, as should be the case right now.  Part of this  effort 
> is using portal monitors and other
> radiation detectors to see the rather small radiation signatures (alpha,  
> gamma, neutron etc.)
> emitted by possible nuclear DEVICES (i.e. weapons) entering the USA and  
> elsewhere.
> All well and good.
>  
>      A person who can bring to bear such a DEVICE into  another nation 
> would probably be able to
> design a radiation shield(s) to make it very difficult and/or impossible to 
>  detect such a DEVICE.
>  
>      As Oppenheimer once responded to the question (How  would you detect 
> such a weapon),
> he wryly suggested that one needs a screwdriver to detect such DEVICES.  
> (i.e not some
> sophisticated radiation detector(s)).  Hopefully USA and other  nation's 
> will use direct inspection of
> containers, shipping packages etc. to look for nuclear DEVICES  directly.
>  
>      I don't want to dwell on this topic, but the  imagined threat could 
> possibly be real.  A small boat 
> on the Hudson River could be used to deliver a DEVICE in the vicinity of  
> New York City or 
> elsewhere.  Other scenarios exist.
>  
>      Thanks to all the people working on such detection  and 
> package/shipment inspections.
>  
>  
>       Regards,    Joseph R. (Joe)  Preisig, PhD
>  
>    
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--
Franz Schoenhofer, PhD, MinRat
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
mobile: ++43 699 1706 1227