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Brian,
Your point is well taken and I am aware of this. On
the other hand, any would-be terrorist thinking about using radioactive
materials would come up with similar ideas. The only casualties that have ever
been caused by radioactive sources have been caused by concentrated sources not
by dispersed ones. "Dilution is the solution to pollution".
Your constitution guaranties the right to bear
arms. Guns are fairly irrelevant in today's world. Today's equivalent is
information and knowledge. I think people should have the information of what
the real risk from radioactive material is (Don't listen to me. Just go to the
IAEA website.) instead of following the dirty bomb red herring, so they can
protect themselves.
I tried to maintain a balance of identifying the
real issue (which any terrorist would already know), without giving technical
details.
How would we look if all the experts and the
government said that there is no risk from terrorist use of radioactive material
and that any terrorist handling such material would get 6000R (or whatever) and
immediately die and then someone pulls off a radiological attack? (You would get
6000R if you tried to aerosolize the source with a fingernail file, but in no
other way.) It would result in a complete loss of confidence in our system. This
is what the terrorists really want. They don't care if it takes a big body count
to do that or not.
I think we have to maintain a balance in the type
of information that enters the public domain. The "all is well" message needs to
be balanced with a reality check every once in a while.
Respectfully,
Kai
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