Re: Skin dose from enriched uranium

["baumbaug@nosc.mil" <baumbaug@nosc.mil>]

        Dear Radsafers,


>Quastel wrote:, and  Al answered:
>>
>Since the material in question is enriched uranium, please advise the
>author that he better not have his hero hold too big a mass, or the hero
>will be holding a critical mass and will probablly be killed by the
>fission radiation.  
>
>Also,
>> what mass of unshielded enriched uranium would cause sufficient acute whole
>> body exposure to cause a lethal acute radiation syndrome?
>

        As most of you know, if you took greater than two halves (in a
perfect world) of a critical mass - one in each hand (don't do this boys and
girls) and slowly brought your hands together you would eventually obtain an
arc which would produce ("more than enough" prompt neutron, etc.) radiation
to kill that person.  If you were not "close and personal" - i.e. did the
same experiment from afar lets say two boxes were received by terrorists who
did not know what they had and the boxes were pushed together or were placed
within the same car trunk..... I would not like to be standing anywhere too
close...

        This is "obviously" not my area of expertise, but the "author" has
lots of material to play with if he/she does some research...

        Joel
Joel T. Baumbaugh (baumbaug@nosc.mil)
Naval Research and Development (NRaD)
San Diego, CA., U.S.A.

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