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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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