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Hi
Kai,
I doubt that
anyone who actually has such measurements is going to give them to
you.
But even if
he/she did, it would only give you one or a few examples -- depending on the
design, the radiation fields could vary by several orders of magnitude
(particularly in the case of some hypothetical terrorist job).
That's mainly
due to the difference in the material used for the bomb and due to the neutron
multiplication factor (subcritical) of the as-built
configuration.
To give you a
range of possible values, for HEU the total neutron rate, in neutrons per
second, could be from just a couple hundred to a few thousand, for WG-Pu it
would be from about 1E6 to 20E6, and for RG-Pu it would be something like 10E6
to 150E6.
On a mass-specific
basis, the neutron rates are not very high - ~2.25/kg-sec for HEU, 51E3/kg-sec
for WG-Pu, and 340E3/kg-sec for RG-Pu. But when you take the total mass and
subcritical amplification into account, you get the range of results listed
above (for your "suitcase bomb" implosion-type device, the neutron amplification
could be anywhere from ~8x to 100x-plus).
I haven't tried to
figure out from this what kind of reading it might give you on "your average
Geiger counter" or any other kind of detector. But it seems clear that a HEU
bomb would be virtually impossible to detect (its high density & weight
would probably be a better clue - something that anyone who has ever handled a
nuclear fuel bundle will surely appreciate :-)
Jaro
-----Original Message-----
From: Kai Kaletsch [mailto:info@eic.nu] Sent: Friday August 16, 2002 8:46 AM To: RadSafe Subject: Radiation from an A-bomb Friends,
Does anyone have measurements of gamma and neutron
fields associated with an (unexploded) A-bomb?
Will your average Geiger counter detect a "suitcase
bomb"? What should be used to detect one?
[Got a call this morning about this and couldn't
answer it.]
Thanks,
Kai
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