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Re: Dirty Bomb



Title: RE: Dirty Bomb
Hi all,
 
The "dirty bomb" scenarios all seem to be quite tame from a radiological impact point of view. I was wondering if anyone is aware of any organizational structure that is in place among government agencies to direct the response and to deal with risk communication and how this is supposed to work in the real world.
 
I once responded to an accident involving a truck carrying yellowcake. The agencies that had people who knew something about yellowcake thought that it was not their mandate and the agency that got involved had no one available with radiation knowledge. As an employee of the owner of the yellowcake, I was the only one there with any idea how to treat the stuff and the only instruments that could detect radiation were the ones that I brought with me. This was in Canada. (BTW everything was fine. The driver was not seriously injured. We cleaned up the minute amount of YC that came out of one drum and loaded the rest of the YC on another truck. It was probably a good thing not to have too many "experts" on the scene.)
 
There was a YC truck crash in the US that I was told about that did not go so well. The truck was hit by a train. The driver was killed and the YC pretty much all spilled out onto the train and a good section of track. In this case several agencies responded. One of them decided to land their helicopter right in the middle of all the YC, blowing it all over the place.
 
Responding to a YC truck accident in a reasonable manner should be pretty simple. The truck is clearly marked with the radiation symbol, class 7 and the UN number. One would think that an intelligent, appropriate and consistent response is possible.
 
What about the terrorist case? They will probably not leave the UN number of the stuff that they are going to spread. Something goes boom, some windows break and a few people get cut by flying glass. How long until someone figures out that it is a radiological attack (or rules out that it was a radiological attack)? Will other agents (chemical or biological) be ruled out somehow? (The radioactivity could just be a decoy for something real bad.) How long until the appropriate response is communicated to the people doing the work and the people that got hit?
 
Anyone know how this is supposed to work?
 
Kai