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Radiological attack: 'Manhattan would be uninhabitable for years'
Independent ..... in the UK ^ | 6 16 2002 | By Geoffrey Lean

Posted on 06/17/2002 5:03:44 AM PDT by dennisw

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To: PoppingSmoke
Is alleged threat more dangerous then real one?


41 posted on 06/17/2002 4:24:02 PM PDT by DTA
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To: dennisw
What makes anyone think they would use one piece of cobalt. Why not 10-15?
42 posted on 06/17/2002 4:44:40 PM PDT by blam
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To: dennisw
I think we neew to more concerned of a Chinese or German military/madman sending some missiles over here to USA!
43 posted on 06/17/2002 6:26:40 PM PDT by timestax
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To: timestax
Need
44 posted on 06/17/2002 6:26:57 PM PDT by timestax
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To: dennisw
Hey Dennis, you forgot the Fear Junkie bump.

Want me to go over to the anthrax/smallpox/suitcase nuke/cyanide in the water threads, and rustle up a crowd for ya?

45 posted on 06/17/2002 10:59:00 PM PDT by Byron_the_Aussie
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To: dennisw
Heck. To a suicidal attacker its even easier then that. Take your cobalt pencil, grind it down, collect the particles and pack them around your explosive. Hell just sprinkle the stuff out of a general aviation aircraft over the target area. The point is these scenarios are endless. What are we going to do to the murderous barbarians who attempt them?
46 posted on 06/18/2002 12:01:15 AM PDT by Kozak
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To: blam
What makes anyone think they would use one piece of cobalt. Why not 10-15?

Same difference. Biological dose is cumulative for acute harmful effects. If you get a 10,000 rem exposure in a short time from a single source, the lethality is the same as getting a set of ten doses from ten separate sources, each giving you 1,000 rem.

Handling issues are similar. The photon flux from gamma sources in air is a scalar field. If you have 10 sources sitting unshielded in air at 1 foot away, you'll get the same exposure that you would from a single source of 10 times the activity. This neglects self-shielding in the source, but for gamma emiiters like 60Co or 137Cs in a thin cylindical geometry, self-shielding is a second-order effect. Working with separate sources is not necessarily easier than working with a single source. You'd likely need less shielding for individual sources of lower activity, but you'd have that many more handling operations to perform. Its true you could spread the dose out among more people if you had a whole gang of people willing to take a few thousand rems of exposure each, but in the end you'd probably kill a lot of your own people to produce something whose damage potential, while inducing fear among the sheeple, is probably quite limited.

Its hard to imagine this kind of thing being pulled off without access to some fairly high-tech stuff. We're taking about a high-activity hot cell with quite sophisticated manipulators and other apparatus. Not the kind of thing you'd find in your basement or garage. But a national program might have such things. If one is really concerned about this kind of thing, we'd better put some kind of military pressure on rogue states like Iraq and Libya, that have the money and motivation to get these kinds of facilities set up.

47 posted on 06/18/2002 6:28:18 AM PDT by chimera
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To: Nexus

48 posted on 06/18/2002 10:52:42 AM PDT by Tennessee_Bob
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To: dennisw
I find the argument of the article technically unpersuasive. The FAS is well known as a nuclear scare group, peddling itself as doing science based merely on the political views of name scientists who sign on in general, but don't have anything to do with what the organization actually says. There are a number of things in the article that stick out in "poisonous dyhydrogen monoxide" ways.

For instance, it says "1/10 living downwind will eventually develop cancer". But cancer kills on the order of 1/4 of all Americans, without any increased radiation exposure. Along with heart disease it is the leading cause of eventual natural death. Saying "eventually" someone gets it is like saying "eventually, we are all going to die". True, meant to sound scary, in fact vacuous.

Then there is the comment that under existing US regulations, buildings with that much radiation would have to be demolished. But that only shows that existing regulations are ridiculously tight, due to agitation by nuke fear peddlars like these guys. I went to the University of Chicago. The chemistry building was used for radiation experiments (on radium and what not) back in the 1930s. In the late 1980s or so, government regulations were tightened, and the University was forced to gut the interior of the building (keeping the outer shells) because the tiny levels of residual radiation, above background, were no longer in compliance with government limits. Thousands of students had used that Chemistry building for decades without any adverse results.

Then there is the idea that the stuff would be impossible to clean up short of demolishing everything. This is wildly implausible. Cobalt-60 can only be dangerous because it is seriously radioactive. Seriously radioactive elements are extremely easy to detect - all you need is a geiger counter. The cobalt is not going to worm its way into special nooks and crannies, magically. It does not transfer its radioactivity to surrounding objects, like some demonic haunting. You could easily look for and wash away the stuff. Some low levels might remain, but would be no more dangerous than elevated radium levels in the U Chicago chemisty building.

Furthermore, toward the end they hint (barely) at it being "difficult" to get radioactive cobalt to disperse perfectly. That is a gross understatement. Almost all of it would fall very close to the spot the device was detonated, in rather large bits, where it would be relatively easy to find and clean up.

The dangers of something when perfectly dispersed are like those silly calculations of lethality, where you take a lethal dosage of something and divide by the quantity and conclude "it could kill n people". Without bothering to figure out how exactly the dosage and no more is supposed to get to exactly n people with nothing wasted elsewhere. Which is about like saying, "with one dull knife everyone on earth could be murdered", just ignoring the little practical problem of sticking it into each one of them in sequence.

Of a piece with this sort of thing are the scare mongering stories of the effectiveness of chemical weapons. A Tokyo cult is said to have enough nerve gas to kill everyone on earth 3 times over. As a fact, they killed a dozen people when releasing it in a confined area on a subway - though they did sicken thousands more. Which is nasty enough to be serious about preventing it, without any of the ridiculous scare-mongering exaggeration to mythical doomsday proportions.

These are all very clusmy weapon ideas. They would not kill large numbers of people. (Even in wartime, industrial quantities of chemical agents delivered over years by entire armies cause fewer casualties than ordinary bullets and bombs, by an order of magnitude). They would be a pain to clean up economically, but that is all.

The article at least avoids calling the "dirty nukes" or "poor man's nukes". That is another version of the same exaggeration, playing in people's scientific ignorance and a generalized fear of anything nuclear as supposedly demonic. Dirty nukes just aren't nukes, in all practical terms. There is a true discontinuity between the potential effects of nuclear weapons and all others. In the future, it is potentially possible for highly sophisticated bio weapons to have something like that level of danger, although no existing biological warfare capability on the planet - including the Russians and our own - is yet anywhere near that league.

For the moment, only real nuclear weapons are true weapons of mass destruction as the term is bandied about. All the other types called that are called that purely as exaggerated scare mongering. This article is just another example of such scare mongering.

49 posted on 06/18/2002 1:58:20 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: JasonC
Better be concerned about some madman/military type from China, or Korea sending some missiles our way!
50 posted on 06/18/2002 3:23:28 PM PDT by timestax
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To: JasonC
I was whole-body-dosimetered one day at a nuke plant. In front of me was a turbine engineer from CE who specialized in the BWR turbines. They picked up a cobalt rad spec in his lungs. To this day I remember his "Aw Sh$t!".

His chances of getting lung cancer had just become very very high.

There are some investment ideas though -- the people who make whole body dosimeters, and companies that develop no-surgical or minimally-invasive-surgical techniques to remove rad particles from the aveolae of the lungs.

51 posted on 06/18/2002 3:29:44 PM PDT by bvw
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Sounds like rubbish to me. I don't get how these poorly guarded crop irradiation plants can house deadly cobalt for all these years, under everyone's noses, and there's been no problems.

Plus, isn't the FAS one of those uber-lefty organizations?
52 posted on 06/18/2002 8:50:54 PM PDT by Conservative til I die
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To: bvw
There are some investment ideas though -- the people who make whole body dosimeters, and companies that develop no-surgical or minimally-invasive-surgical techniques to remove rad particles from the aveolae of the lungs.

Chelation agents are the indicated means of treating most types in internal contaminants. There are any number of them available, depending on the elemental form of the radionuclide.

53 posted on 06/19/2002 7:16:14 AM PDT by chimera
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To: JasonC
The dangers of something when perfectly dispersed are like those silly calculations of lethality, where you take a lethal dosage of something and divide by the quantity and conclude "it could kill n people". Without bothering to figure out how exactly the dosage and no more is supposed to get to exactly n people with nothing wasted elsewhere. Which is about like saying, "with one dull knife everyone on earth could be murdered", just ignoring the little practical problem of sticking it into each one of them in sequence.

Sometimes when I'm debating with anti-nuke kooks they bring up a similar issue in the context of plutonium contamination, the old "one pound of plutonium properly dispersed can give everyone on Earth lung cancer" scare mongering. My response is, sure, but here's a scarier one: a single ejaculation by a normal male contains enough viable sperm to impregnate every fertile female in this country, but the issue here, as with plutonium, is one of distribution. At that point, if anyone else is listening, the kook's arguments are drowned in derisive laughter (as they should be).

Note to Moderator: scientific discussion only, no profanity intended.

54 posted on 06/19/2002 7:23:30 AM PDT by chimera
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To: chimera
Chelation works on the blood, as I understand, and has little effect on particles that manage to get into the aveolae sacs, but not pass through the thin walls into the blood.

Still, I agree with you that chelation-type, dialysis-type cleansings might indeed by useful and economic in such a terrible event.

Because the radioactive particles have a clear signature, one might run blood through a screener an remove the small amount that is radioactive.

55 posted on 06/19/2002 7:36:33 AM PDT by bvw
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To: bvw
For inhalation of very fine particles there will eventually be transfer of the material to a location in a form wherein chelation will be effective in some manner. It may take some time and involve a long course of treatment, but such has been done before. For larger particles elsewhere in the respiratory system, my guess (I'm not an M.D.) is that some kind of inhalation therapy and combined with expectorant would be the way to go. This kind of contamination is not unprecedented in industrial hygiene, which is basically what we're talking about. The radiological aspects add some complications, such as management of recovered material and perhaps the need for a quicker time course to avoid accumulated dose, but in terms of getting at the material its a similar problem.

Surgery would be a last-resort approach, wherein the danger to the individual's survival was imminent and grave, since surgery of this type carries its own risk, and that has to be weighed against the risks of taking a more measured approach. In cases where you have more time to plan, its generally best to take your time and evaluate your options, although the temptation to do something, often based in irrational fear, is hard to suppress.

56 posted on 06/19/2002 7:47:19 AM PDT by chimera
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To: dennisw
FYI: Lead, Pb, is just over 700 pounds per cubic foot. Look for a truck bomb in just about small van, or small boat...
57 posted on 06/20/2002 10:28:05 PM PDT by SevenDaysInMay
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To: dennisw
FYI: Lead, Pb, is just over 700 pounds per cubic foot. Look for a truck bomb in just about small van, or small boat...
58 posted on 06/20/2002 10:28:21 PM PDT by SevenDaysInMay
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To: chimera
WOW, someone who actually knows what they are talking about. The only way to locally distribute a radionuclide would be a low order detonation with powderized (in this case) cobalt 60. The machining and protections needed to survive this operation would be well outside the capability of the terrorist we have seen. Imagine machining cobalt(very hard) with on contact rad levels of 100,000 to 1,000,000 rem per hour. This can only be done with special equipment behind several feet of lead glass. Then the question becomes, how do you move this. I've moved Co-60 pigs that contain sources like this. No small feat. Imagine a cubic meter of Pb....
59 posted on 06/21/2002 2:50:34 PM PDT by fuente
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To: SC DOC
Your IR-192 comment is correct. Welders use this type of source often. But while x-rays are often generated by electrical means for "x-rays" of our bodies, radiation therapies usually employ massive Co-60 sources.
60 posted on 06/21/2002 2:55:51 PM PDT by fuente
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