Re: Package Irradiation

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@HOTMAIL.COM>]

>Would package and mail irradiation be an economical solution to the 

>unwanted transport of biological agent contamination via commercial and 

>government mail systems?

---

I am not the person to comment enough of the economic & practical aspects 

but one can assume that the dose rate would need to be very high - and the 

dose at least the order of 10 000 Gy (1000 000 rad) - bacteria vary a lot in 

radiosensitivity depending on "species". 10 kGy may provide a bacteria 

reduction by a factor of one million. For a dose of 10 000 Gy, 3 Gy per 

minute would mean 10 000 Gy/(3 Gy/min) = 3333  min or about 2.3 days. 

Perhaps it could be done for suspect items or mail. The involved personel 

would need to be trained (occupational hazard!). It doesn't seem like 

something for FedEx and their competitors. I also wonder what 

"anti-radiation experts" would say who  explain that irradiation sources is 

a convenient excuse to reprocess spent irradiated fuel rods from weapons 

production reactors.



My personal reflections only,



Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com

http://www.geocities.com/bjorn_cedervall/





_________________________________________________________________

Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.