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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
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