[bonesmccoy]

You guys keep writing about radiological contamination from an explosive. I'm not very concerned about our ability to contain and handle such problems. While the area would be radioactive for a while, my understanding is that very few isotopes have such extended half-lifes that it represents a long-term problem.

If it were plutonium that would be one thing, but other elements do not have such lengthy half-lives.

[steve86]

If it were plutonium that would be one thing, but other elements do not have such lengthy half-lives.

I am far from being a nuclear physicist but it depends on the isotope as well as the element. 239Pu, if I'm reading a table correctly, has a half-life of almost 25,000 years. 228Pu, only a few milliseconds. Different types of fission weapons produce isotopes of various elements in different ratios. I think alot of the concern over a radiological bomb is due to Cobalt-60 stolen from medical or irradiation sources, with a half-life of 5 years.

[bvw]

A dirty bomb has a spread effect -- as an explosive it may not take out more than a few yards -- but the contamination and rad effect can be over many square miles. And while the half-lifes are short for most things, some are not. In even in that short span -- minutes/hours -- tens of thousands of people can be directly effected.

For example: Cobalt. I took a whole-body dosimeter one day, right behind a turbine engineer who -- very bad for him -- had a spec of Cobalt-60 in his lungs. That's as bad as plutonium. Probably picked it up from some of the alloyed metals used in the boiling water nuke turbines he also worked on.

I'll never forget his "Aw Sh&t!".

Hopefuly he had surgery to have it removed before it started a cancer Radioactivity tags itself. It does make comprehensive clean-up possible and not that difficult.