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[cdn-nucl-l] RE: [cdn-nucl-l] Re: [cdn-nucl-l] Rad Rangers - Smithsonian, March 2003
Good points
Rod,
But teaching
people the simple concepts of time, distance and shielding, while desirable,
will not solve all possible problems.
When I first
heard about the Georgia incident and saw the video footage, I was struck by the
fact that the source was simply lying out there without any shielding
whatsoever.
None of the
accounts I have seen so far explained how it got that way -- was it someone's
dumb idea of a joke ?
If such a
source had been blown up by terrorists in a 'dirty bomb,' at least there would
have been some warning -- before people start showing up with severe burns &
ARS, with no apparent cause.
Jaro
In a message dated 3/3/03 1:13:59 PM,
frantaj@aecl.ca writes:
Within hours they felt nauseated, grew dizzy and started
vomiting. Soon their skin started to peel -- radiation burn. A stream of beta
particles, or electrons, from the strontium had destroyed their
skin, while
x rays and gamma rays had blasted the underlying tissue. Their wounds festered.
Back
in Tbilisi, physicians faxed an urgent plea to the IAEA
headquarters in Vienna for help securing the devices." My shock was so great
when I learned how radioactive these sources are," says Abel Julio González,
director of radiation and waste safety at the IAEA. The canisters found in Georgia were
highly radioactive, on the order of 40,000 curies apiece - about 40 times the
output of a radiation therapy machine.
Interesting. If
these ignorant men had been on Spring Break in Florida and decided to lay down
in the warm sun for a couple of hours of blissfully comfortable sleep, they
might have experienced very similar symptom with similar risk of long term
health consequences.
Do you think there will any urgent pleas for help in
securing that deadly radioactive orb located 93 million miles away?
Let's
teach people the simple concepts of time, distance and shielding. Let's remind
them how simple it is to detect radiation and begin marketing radiation
detectors as simple devices that are about as complicated as a decent
flashlight. Let's even make sure that people understand the units of measure
involved and provide them with some simple charts that give the legitimate
indicators of when they should be concerned and take action to reduce
exposure.
In this case, a little knowledge will go a LONG way in
disarming terrorists. As the cowardly lion found out, if you pull away the
curtain of ignorance, there really is not too much to be afraid of. It is far
more dangerous to allow the existence of night clubs (125 people dead in a
single week here in the US) than to have a nuclear powered
economy.
Rod