Re: Dirty Bomb

["Jim Hardeman" <Jim_Hardeman@MAIL.DNR.STATE.GA.US>]

Kai -



To my knowledge, no "real" organizational structure like the one you mention exists in the US. If someone has different information, please advise. 



Yes, I'm aware of the Presidential Decison Directives (PDD's) on weapons of mass destruction ... Once it goes boom, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is in charge of "consequence management", but they will rely heavily on the assets of other federal agencies such as DOE, EPA, CDC, etc. Under the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan (FRERP), the "health agencies" will also form something called "Advisory Team on Environment, Food and Health" (A-Team) ... this is composed of personnel from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ... probably both from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Despite being in the plan for more than 6 years, and exercising at dozens of exercises, the feds have yet to convince me that they can actually field a credible A-Team if they actually had to. Also, jurisdictional iss!

ues are quite unclear ... who's in charge, feds, state or locals?



IAEA and/or the EU may have such an organizational structure, but again, I'm not aware of it. 



Not to criticize anyone, but anybody who claims that the ability to monitor for radioactive materials is readily available throughout the country (I'm only going to address the US, since I'm not familiar with the capabilities in other countries) is seriously deluding him/herself. Several years ago, our emergency management agency, in conjunction with the US DOE, provided radiological instruments to local jurisdictions along truck and rail routes between the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. A couple of weeks ago, we were notified that a private citizen had found a box marked "radioactive" on his property, and the local fire / hazmat folks apparently refused to even go out to take a look ... so I went the following day. If these responders are unwilling to go investigate something that's clearly labeled as radioactive, how effective do you think they're going to be in response to a real or perceived terrorist e!

vent involving  radioactive materials?



Jim Hardeman

Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us 



>>> Kai Kaletsch <info@eic.nu> 5/15/2002 11:22:34 >>>

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



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