Re: Dirty Bombs

["Richard L. Hess" <lists@richardhess.com>]

At 07:42 PM 11/27/2002 -0600, Rad Safety Institute wrote:

> Has anyone
>
> looked into the dirty bomb scenarios given on the FAS Web at this
>
> address: 
>
>    
>
> http://www.fas.org/faspir/2002/v55n2/dirtybomb.htm
>
> The calculations are not documented
>
> (methodology/models?) and they violate all of my intuitions. The language
>
> is inflammatory, and the results appear quite exaggerated. Have any of
>
> you done any recent calculations we could use for comparison? All
>
> opinions appreciated!  Ed Battle


Ed, as a visiting, non-professional member of this list, my first

reaction is this is based on the normal LNT calculations. I certainly

think that the outer rings (0.05% increase in cancer) is in the

statistical noise, but I'm not a statistician. I'd even go so far as to

say the middle rings (0.5%) are questionable.


As to whether the entire city would have to be demolished would be based

on what the cleanup standards should be. ALARA at what cost??? If we're

seeing background radiation of 10µR/hr and the event adds 1µR/hr to that,

is that any worse than moving to Denver? So New York or Washington become

Denver? Do we demolish Denver? 


Is the radiation you're measuring in the brownstone façade from the

device or residual in the stone itself? What was the measurement there

before? Oh, you don't have it? 


I think this is the type of press that used to scare the stuffing out of

me. Thanks to the list, I've become more critical.


Did I pass the test?


Cheers,


Richard