radiological terrorism?

["Marco Caceci" <mcaceci@radal.com>]

It used to be that 'unconventional' (terrorist and war) threats were classified as ABC: Atomic, Biological and Chemical (NBC when

Nuclear sounds cooler).

It seems to me that the A in ABC has gone out of fashion: following the anthrax chain-mail events 99% of information traffic in now

on Biological, the rest essentially on Chemical threats (Sarin, VX...).

It the disregard for nuclear/radiological threats rational, wishfull thinking, or plain miopy?



Even ignoring as pure fiction (as I believe to be the case) the suitcase nukes Mr Bin Laden reportedly purchased, shouldn't we be

concerned with the possibility that radioactive materials could be dispersed by criminals or madmen, with obvious health and social

fallout?



I admit I have a stake in this, I have been manufacturing radiation alarms for airport/border security for a few years now. But I

still see limited awareness of radiological risk among airport, mail, custom authorities, and police.



Nor have I seen on RADSAFE mention of the urgency, for professionals handling radioactive materials, to excercise now additional

caution to prevent diversion of substances even nominally active.



Rather than having thousands of overstressed mail workers and policemen carrying around hand-held gamma spectrometers, I posit we

should equip mail sorting rooms and public buildings with simple gamma monitors/alarms. The cost could be limited, compared to the

78 billion dollars (correct me if I am wrong) recently allocated to R&D for the detection of bio and chem agents.



Marco Caceci



http://radal.com

mcaceci@radal.com



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