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RE: Nova - Dirty Bombs - London Scenario question/critque
This calls to mind a radiologist in the 1950's who rented his radium sources
to other physicians. He personally delivered the sources, which hung in a
container suspended from the hood ornament of his auto.
-----Original Message-----
From: Stewart Farber [mailto:farbersa@optonline.net]
Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 5:44 PM
To: Radsafe
Subject: Re: Nova - Dirty Bombs - London Scenario question/critque
2/26/03 2:19:16 PM, Stewart Farber <farbersa@optonline.net> wrote:
>Hi all:
>
>I listened to the NOVA "special" last night and found it remarkable how
>sensationalistic it was. It seemed their intent was to maximize public
panic if
>and when anyone sets off a bomb involving any amount of radioactivity, no
matter
>how trivial.
==============
An afterthought on the scenario of someone driving around a city like London
with
a 2,000 Ci [74,000 GBq] Cs-137 source in their auto. I recall doing a
background
radiation survey [short duration High Pressure Ionization Chamber readings
of
total gamma background], the better part of a mile from the Bath Iron Works
in
Bath, Maine just as Maine Yankee was going operational.
During the readings at a substation a location for routine TLD monitoring,
background levels jumped about 50% for a few minutes and then returned to
normal,
followed by a series of jumps of similar magnitude and then return to
background.
I called the RSO at the Bath Iron Works to ask if they had been doing any
industrial radiography at certain specific times I specified.
After a long pause, he asked how I could know this since I was offsite at a
distance he could not imagine my being able to get a reading.
The point is, I was able in 1974 to be aware of an industrial radiography
source
being removed from its shield [despite local shielding used by the users of
the
source taking the shot] at a distance of almost a mile, due to skyshine from
the
source.
Isn't it rather trivial to set up even rather crude real time radiation
sensors
around any major city that could track the presence and movement [of a gamma
source at least] into or near a city quite easily such that the source could
be
intercepted before it gets to the heart of a city? A helicopter with a
radiation
sensor could pinpoint the location of any vehicle carrying a substantial
unshielded source [like that hyped in the NOVA program] in a matter of
minutes
and it could be intercepted by authorities before it might be exploded.
Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
email: farbersa@optonline.net
[203] 367-0791
=====
>
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