I think it would be useful if comments on technical inaccuracies be set to NOVA at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/feedback/ . I am sure they would like the feedback. There was a "Live Chat" held today, and you can see what types of questions the public asked at http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/03/sp_tv_pbsnova022603.htm . I don't think any health physicist signed in, because there were no comments about the inaccuracies in the show. (I guess too many peole were on this list.
By the way, information on transcripts can be found http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3007_dirtybom.html
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. For example, a stick of dynamite in a bucket of woodash obtained
from Northern Florida would disperse 300,000 picoCuries of Cs-137 [10 kg of ash
at 30,000 pCi/kg] or a total of about 11,000 Bq of Cs-137. If this were done,
would the authorities want to tear down London or New York because some of it is
contaminated to "above background" levels? I'm not being facetious. Thousands of
tons of radioactive woodash [with greatly elevated Cs-137 levels of on the order
of 20,000 pCi/kg ash] from wood burning power plants in New England are being
mixed with manure today and spread on organic farming coop! fields with no
concern. Laughable actually as to the disconnect between organic gardening use of
Cs-137 laden woodash and the hysteria about a dirty bomb's impact on a wide area.
The scenario NOVA dramatized last night involved a whole lot more Cs-137, or a
source with 74,000 GBq of Cs-137 [2000 Ci] as I recall them mentioning. For a
point source of Cs-137 this equates to about 6.6E6 R/hr at 1 cm. If the
terrorists spent 1 hour at say 2 feet from this unshielded source [??? a wag
assumption] in fabricating the bomb and transporting it they would receive about
7,000 R whole body.
Does anyone on the list have any feel for how quickly a person would be
incapacitated by receiving 7,000 to 10,000 R whole body?
The exposure to the hands and fingers of these terrorists fabricating such a bomb
would have been much higher --perhaps 500,000 R for 10 minutes of handling in
fabrication. Would these terrorists even have been ab! le to drive a few hours
after handling a 2,000 Ci Cs-137 source for the time it would take to fabricate a
bomb and transport it to the point of use??
Stewart Farber, MSPH