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Goiania Summary x Dirty Bomb
Dear Jim,
I'll take your question to also include as summary many others' that was
made by private e-mail
I - FIRST PART
a) The source was not unshielded - The equipment was left in the site of a
disused clinic;
b) Some people had heard rumours that was a valuable equipment they went to
the site and tried to dismantle the teletherapy unit with simple tools,
finally succeeded in removing the rotating assembly. This stainless steel
casing appeared valuable to them and they took it in a wheelbarrow to the
house of one of them, half kilometre from the disused clinic;
c) The rotating assembly had been placed on the ground under a mango tree
and they worked intermittently to remove the source wheel of the rotating
shutter. In the course of the attempt they punctured the 1 mm thick window
of the source capsule with a screw-driver and scooped out some of the
source. On 18 September they succeeded in removing the source wheel;
d) The pieces were transported in a wheelbarrow and sold to a junkyard;
e) That night the junkyard's owner went into the garage where the pieces had
been placed and noticed a blue glow emanating from the source capsule. He
thought that the powder might valuable or even supernatural, and took the
capsule into the house;
f) Over next three days various neighbours, relatives and acquaintances were
invited to see the capsule as a curiosity. During this time he and his wife
examined the powder closely She subsequently died (dose 5.7 Gy). He survived
(dose 7.0 Gy) - He died after 5 years
g) With the aid of a screwdriver friends removed some fragments of the
source. These were about the size of rice grains, but readily crumbled into
powder. This was distributed for several persons in different
places:............
h) Thus began the most serious radiological accident ever to have occurred
II PART
A) SCREENING AND CARE OF PEOPLE
GOIANIA POPULATION 1,000,000
MONITORED 112,000
EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL DOSES INDICATIVE 249
EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL DOSES CONCLUSIVE 129
ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL 49
INTENSIVE MEDICAL CARE 22
DEATH 4
FOREARM IMPUTED 1
B) THE SOURCE
The best estimate of the radioactivity in the recovered waste, including
hospital was 44 TBq (1200 Ci) - Activity before accident 50.9 TBq (1375 Ci)
by September 1987
Model to Assessment the Activity was discussed with scientific community
due the difference above
Dose rate 4.6 Gy/h at 1 m.
C) ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINATION AND WASTE
MAIN FOCI 08
HOUSES 46
PUBLIC AREA 45
6000 Different kind of containers 3500 cubic meter of waste
Jose Julio Rozental
joseroze@netvision.net.il
Israel
. ----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Hardeman
To: andrewsjp@chartertn.net ; magna1@jps.net ; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu ;
FloodJR@NV.DOE.GOV ; crispy_bird@YAHOO.COM
Cc: joseroze@netvision.net.il
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 12:02 AM
Subject: RE: Nova - Dirty Bombs - Who is their expert - FYI
J.J. —
In reference to this scenario below (i.e., terrorists driving around with an
unshielded 2,000 Ci Cs-137 source) do you recall right off hand the activity
of the Cs-137 source involved in the Goiania incident, and how long people
handled that source before beginning to experience ill effects?
Jim Hardeman
Jim_Hardeman@dnr.state.ga.us
>>> "Flood, John" <FloodJR@NV.DOE.GOV> 2/26/2003 12:34:02 >>>
I have problems with several points made or that were omitted from the NOVA
show.
1 - They showed the patients suffering from acute radiation syndrome as a
result of finding the Soviet SR RTGs, yet later showed a "demonstration" of
a terrorist attack in which the dirty bomb was being driven to its
destination by terrorists "already feeling the effects" of radiation
sickness. The source they were purported to be carrying was a Cs-137
quantity quite large enough to kill its assemblers. Despite the obvious
disabling effects of acute radiation syndrome, the terrorists were shown to
be able deliver the device and detonate it as planned. I don't see any
credibility in the scenario at all - a Cs-137 device able to cause the
levels of contamination they described would be hundreds of curies and would
easily disable the people trying to assemble and transport it. Of course it
could be shielded until just before detonation, but the device would no
longer be inconspicuous or readily transportable.
2 - In one of the two scenarios, the expected incidence of cancer from the
bomb materials for persons in the affected area was projected at 1 in 7.
Since the ambient cancer rate would be about 2 in 7, this is a predicted
increase of 50% above the ambient rate. Dose rates required to accomplish
such a radical increase would be extraordinary - such rates were not
observed among the atomic bomb survivors.
3 - I agree that they should have mentioned the variation in natural
background around the world, but doing so would have argued strongly and
rationally in favor of sensible cleanup criteria and against the "every
photon is a killer" idea, neither of which seemed compatible with the whole
idea of doing the show in the first place. More importantly, they could
have described the kinds of doses received in commonly administered nuclear
medicine procedures and even demonstrated that people survive such doses as
a matter of routine and a terrorist is rather unlikely to deliver such doses
to the public. But that kind of story wouldn't do much for the
entertainment value of the show, would it?
They got one part right - we can count on the press to sensationalize events
and keep the public agitated - bad news is big business in this country and
good news is unsellable. And it is an unfortunate side effect of a free
press in a free market economy that the news industry also has to make a
profit. So we have to expect the news that sells best, which isn't
necessarily the news that's most accurate.
Bob Flood
Nevada Test Site
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