Thanks Cindy.
Posted on 07/10/2007 4:16:27 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A new study by the Canadian government predicts that the explosion of even a small dirty bomb in downtown Toronto could result in a rush on the city’s medical facilities and an economic toll of more than $23 billion.
The disclosure comes just months after the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said a dirty bomb assault in that country was "overdue.”
The study explored the nightmare scenario involving the detonation of a device containing a modest amount of americium-241, a plutonium byproduct, The Canadian Press news agency reported, noting:
"The grim outline is not far-fetched. A database of lost and stolen radioactive items compiled by The Canadian Press reveals that an industrial gauge similar to the device in the study was snatched by thieves in Red Deer, Alberta, in June 2003.”
The device, which contains americium and is used in connection with oil wells, was later recovered, but it was gone for five days before its owners realized it had been taken.
The study also predicted that if a dirty bomb – radioactive material spread using conventional explosives – instead contained a sizeable amount of cesium-137, the results would be far worse, spreading radioactivity over an area of nearly 100 square miles.
The aim of a dirty bomb is not so much to kill people but to create panic and disruption, according to Tom Cousins of Defence Research and Development Canada, which helped prepare the report. The radioactive contamination of large areas would "feed on the people’s fear of radiation,” he said.
The study calculated that 10 percent of the people in the vicinity of a dirty bomb explosion would seek medical attention, overwhelming the health system, The Canadian Press reported.
In assessing the economic effects of a dirty bomb, the researchers considered the costs of decontamination, damage to buildings, evacuation of people, loss of productivity, medical treatment and reduced tourism revenue.
The economic toll of a cesium-137 detonation would be as much as $250 billion in Toronto and $80 billion in Vancouver, according to the study. Canadians are taking the dirty bomb threat seriously. The Ottawa International Airport has now been equipped with 25 detectors to sniff out radioactive materials.
"You can’t taste it, you can’t smell it, there are no dogs that can find it,” said Chris Clarke of Mobile Detect, a firm working with the airport. "You need to go in with detectors and find it.”
Any major town should have the same fear.
Those Canadians need to git outa the danged cities and back out in all that wilderness trappin them danged beavers an such!!!
C'mon Canaydeeyuns return ta yer roots and git up to Hudson's Bay!!! Reduce that carbon footprint and stop bein a target for murderous Mooslimbs!!!
“the results would be far worse, spreading radioactivity over an area of nearly 100 square miles.”
That’s detectable radiation. Now, what’s the area for a dangerous radiation dose? And now for one that’s over Canadian standards for “general population” exposure?
Note that neither the actual radiation dose nor initial source strength is given in this article. Only terms like “substantial” and “worse” and similar vague undefined terms.
http://www.radprocalculator.com/Gamma.aspx
Here’s a calculator that lets you figure out some of the issues. A kilocurie of Cs137 at 100 meters would expose you to about 23 millirems per hour. You’d need to stand there for 4000 hours to get a dose that would make you sick (not a lethal dose, just one that would make you ill. A 100% lethal dose would take 28,000 hours).
There are other codes that bear directly on the problem and when I get to the computer that has them I’ll post more.
And yet, the Canadian policy of welcoming radical muslims is one of the WORST in the western hemisphere.
An Alpha emitter of lower Specific Activity could in the long term be more fatal because of inhalation effects, such as lung and liver cancer. Thorium, for example, has a feeble Gamma associated with the decay and would be a little more difficult to detect and easier to shield, compared to Cs137 and Co60.
A 1000 Curie Cs137 dirty bomb driven by 100 kg of TNT on a day with 5 km/hr winds out of the East, popped off 5m above the ground will make a plume that will dose people to 100R Total Effective Dose Equivalent over a .027 square kilometer area (six acres) and a TEDE of 10 millirems over a 0.19 square km area. If I run the dose contour down to 0.1 millirem, then I get the huge area of about 250 square km- but the dose is very very low. The area with a dangerous dose is 6.6 acres, not small by any means but not “a hundred square miles”. A ten millirem dose is undesirable in the general population but is hundreds of times less than a CAT scan (for comparison).
When they say “substantial amount” they must mean the entire contents of a hundred or so hospital-strength irradiators to get up to the “hundred square mile” area. That would be bad! I suspect, though, that once the bad guys stole the first kilocurie, everyone would be on high alert everywhere.
Here’s a geek dump from the simulator:
Source Material : Cs-137
Source Term : 1000 Ci
Airborne Fraction : 1.000
Respirable Fraction : 0.500
Respirable Release Fraction: 0.500
Wind Speed (h=10 m) : 5.0 m/s
Distance Coordinates : All distances are on the Plume Centerline
High Explosive : 100.00 Pounds of TNT
Debris Cloud Top : 240 m
TEDE includes : Inhalation dose + Submersion
Maximum Dose Distance : 0.010 km
MAXIMUM TEDE : 0.043 rem
Inner Contour Dose : 1.0 rem
Middle Contour Dose : 0.500 rem
Outer Contour Dose : 0.100 rem
Exceeds Inner Dose Out To : Not Exceeded
Exceeds Middle Dose Out To : Not Exceeded
Exceeds Outer Dose Out To : Not Exceeded
This sort of attack would be very frightening and a nightmare to clean up. The public would demand that every single bit blown anywhere must be cleaned up (rightfully so) and the whole thing would cost a huge amount and would change the way people think forever. Cleaning up the six acres close to the center would actually be easier than cleaning the 250 sq km at the lower dose.
But as for an actual hazards due to the radiation, they are not that bad in the short term and limited to close up to the actual blast. Breathing in Cs137 is not healthy, but as Europe can attest, not immediately fatal. Chernobyl dumped a gargantuan amount in the air and millions of people breathed it in.
A tiny amount of a radioactive material can make a Geiger click, even amounts that are not harmful like gas lantern mantles, Vaseline glass, and old Fiestaware plates. Any one of these common items will send a counter into hysterical fits, as would a tiny speck of Cs137, which would need to be cleaned up.
fyi
You are correct about shielding, most of the actinides are harder to detect than a load of bananas due to their self-shielding. Nobody shields bananas, though, which have K40 in them, so a truckload of bananas or Brazil nuts looks like a pound or two of U or Th to the older NaI spectrometers.
Thanks Cindy.
You’re very welcome, fanfan.
Just keep on bringing those muzzies in and don’t arm your border guards. On wait, you’re already doing that.
Severe decimal error. I reran the sim and got 0.1 REM for the 6 acre area, even adding in an extended stay. It’s not 100 R.
Still a bear of a cleanup, though!
We have a lot of Th in New England's granite geology. A MA resident gets about 470 Mrem a year from thoron and some deep artesian wells can be trouble. Someone once brought me a plugged-up well water filter. It was loaded with limonite, but on a hunch, I asked about the well.
"375 feet deep" in pegmatite.
>25 mrem/hr.
"Don't take showers!".
Yes, it takes a LOT less Americium to make a Curie. But Thorium is easy to get, and has a great track record for a tiny amount to guarantee lung cancer. Some people have even suggested Polonium 210 ocurring in superphosphate ferilizers used in tobbacco growing adds to carcinogenicity.
A lot of the radon studies were done on Uranium Miners...but since most of them smoked anyway, the studies were discounted.
“Yeah but... Toronto is not “CANADA!””
Try telling that to people in Toronto.
bump
Ping.
I worked in California in the 90’s when there was a fire at a refinery in Richmond, outside of Oakland. The fire sent lots of smoke and fumes in the air, some of irritating, but not really dangerous. Every ER in the Bay area was jammed. I worked in SACRAMENTO, nearly 80 miles away and we were JAMMED with people who “wanted to be checked out”. They had driven over an hour and a half, were fine and still wanted to be checked out. All people will need to hear is “radiation” and they will swamp the medical system demanding to be seen.
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