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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 01/19/2003 6:07:50 AM PST by ex-Texan
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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I'll tell you what's unsettling, bud- the way you posted the F-word, above. We've got some gentle ladies here and they don't need to be reading that kind of language. How about reposting the piece, sans crudity?
They have them, mostly in the microcurie to millicurie range. Most of what hospitals have is 32P and tritium, both beta emitters, tritium decidedly so (very low energy beta). To get concentrations over a wide area (i.e., enough to cause a panicky-manicky response) you'd have to have a source term in the hundreds or thousands of curie range of a radionuclide that is a relatively strong gamma or alpha emitter. Those are hard to come by and much harder to handle with specialized equipment, lke a hot cell with remote manipulators. Not the kind of thing you'd have in a garage or basement (I know, I've used them).
To the best of my knowledge, this is pure fantasy. In other words, it is untrue.
The West looked at nuclear aircraft and found that they were impractical. We built several nuclear rocket engines and tested them but the program was cancelled.
The Russians designed at least one nuclear rocket engine (RD-501) but to my knowledge did nothing further. I am not sure if they tested it.
--Boris
You really think so? Its no mean trick to fabricate the explosive lenses and get them to work that will get you the amount of compression needed for a high-yield explosion. The firing circuits are not a toy, either. Setting off a fission weapon isn't like lighting a fuse on a firecracker, which is the impression some people seem to have.
Your group would have to have an explosives expert of reasonably good capability, an explosives fabricator to form the shaped charges (not someone to press C4 or some other plastic explosive into a random blob), an electronics expert, and a nuclear materials specialist. Not the kind of group you'd have in a garden variety terrorist group. I'm not saying it isn't impossible, but it is unlikely (Sum Of All Fears notwithstanding). The barbarians might be better off trying something else, like flying planes into buildings, or hijacking an LNG tanker as its pulling into port, whatever...
(Note to Moderator: This is not a "loose lips" posting, as these scenarios have all been discussed in the open literature, some right here on FR.)
In many cases, rent-a-cops and chain-link fence are all that separates you from 42-gallon drums of high-level waste.
Steal one and put it in a Ryder van packed with fertilizer/fuel oil or some other explosive.
This is not rocket science, alas.
--Boris
This is assuming you want an implosion bomb of the Nagasaki type. A gun-type bomb, of the Hiroshima type, would be much easier to build, although not nearly as efficient in use of fissionable material. ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION had a fact article on it several years ago. The point of the article was to show how hard it would be, but it wouldn't be impossible. Getting enough fissionable material would be much harder than building the bomb. The terrorist would assemble most of the bomb (concrete tamper, etc.) from material purchased commercially.
I am a hospital radiation safety officer and nuclear medicine specialist, and to my knowledge we have no significant quantitites of such isotopes.
In days of old P-32 was used for bone scans and therapy of metastatic tumors involving bone, and I have heard of it being used for treatment of polycythemia vera.
Nowadays we use Tc-99m phosphate compounds (pure gamma emitter) for the bone scans, and the beta emitters Sr-89 or Sm-153 for the bone therapy.
P-32 and tritium, as well as I-125 and C-14, are used in some biochemical analyses. The pathology department uses some of these but they are in such small quantities that they never come onto my radar.
Probably the most dangerous substance we have is iodine-131, which is a pretty robust beta emitter with a longer half life (8 days) than most of our other medical isotopes.
The quantities are fairly high as well. We will treat thyroid cancer with up to 200 mCi of I-131. We'd never have more than one or two doses on hand, but a radiopharmacy might have several curies.
This would make a pretty decent dirty bomb if your only intent were to frighten the public. I-131 has some high energy gammas that would peg the needle on a survey meter in curie quantities. Nobody would die right away, but a pregnant woman who ingested a high dose might have a mentally retarded baby due to destruction of the fetal thyroid gland (i.e. cretinism). And there would be a theoretical risk of thyroid cancer years down the road for anyone who ingested a high dose, but it would be a very low risk indeed.
The two medical isotopes that cause the most concern are cobalt-60 and cesium-137. We don't have any, except for a few tiny sources of Co-60 used for marking and calibration of nuclear cameras. Large sources were used in the past for radiation therapy, but nowadays they have pretty much been replaced by electron beam and X-ray generators that have no source within. But they are still used in Third World countries.
If we ever see a dirty bomb it will probably be one of these two isotopes. A relatively small number of people (dozens or hundreds at most) could be expected to die from radiation sickness, but the panic and long-term contamination would be substantial.
You can read about what happened in the Brazilian city of Goiania when a 1400 curie Cs-137 source from a radiotherapy machine was cracked open and spread around. Four people died and hundreds were sickened.
-ccm
Thanks, TP.
Keep in mind that very few people have been on the receiving end of the F-word as often as you, and therefore aren't as comfortable with it.
Wow. Thanks for letting me know, DB.
I still reckon that just because those Lefties have let their standards slip is no reason why we Freepers should follow suit. All the best, B.
One trick most everyone overlooks in these kinds of musings is the question of the initiator. That is also tricky business. You need to release an initiating burst of neutrons are just the right instant, very close to the moment of maximum compression. Someone ironically, its easier to do this with an implosion-type device, where the compressive forces are symmetric, that it is with a gun assembly, where there are assymetries and the dynamics are highly mon-linear.
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