Slashdot Mirror
Cobalt-60, and Lessons From a Mexican Theft
Lasrick writes "George Moore and Miles Pomper examine the theft of a truck containing Cobalt-60 and find that, while Mexico did the right thing and reported the theft promptly, they were under no obligation to do so according to international rules and the IAEA. This was true even though the stolen material was 3,000 curies, making it a Category 1 source (the most dangerous). Quoting: 'At a distance of 30.5 centimeters (1 foot) from an unshielded source with an activity level of 3,000 curies, the dose to a bystander would be about 37,000 Rem per hour (a measure of radiation exposure). This means that anyone within a foot of the source when it was out of its shield was being exposed to about 10 Rem per second, a level that would typically kill half of a population exposed to it for 30 seconds. ... The number of fatalities will not be nearly as high as it would have been if the source capsule had been left in a public place. Cobalt 60, like other high-risk radiological sources, is more lethal when it is kept intact as a high-strength source than it would be if spread using a radiological dispersal device such as a so-called “dirty bomb.” Nonetheless, had the Mexican source been used in a dispersal device, the economic consequences could have been extremely significant.'"
An account of what happened and what could have happened via Steve Weintz https://medium.com/war-is-boring/26b40dd869fb
Had a terrorist put this under a seat cushion in a bus terminal, they could kill hundreds, perhaps thousands before it would eventually be tracked down.
Damn dirty bombs, sneak attacks are more deadly.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
'61 was a much better year for Cobalt. Cobalt-60 far overrated, and people are paying too much for it on the open market.
A similar device got loose in Brazil back in 1987, and serves as an example of the kind of mayhem that can heppen when one of these sources get loose even in the hands of non-malicious people. The story on it in wikipedia is interesting - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident.
Not exactly. A dirty bomb wouldn't kill very many people, not directly, anyways (or at least not in the short term, although it'd raise the cancer rate considerably). What it would do is be one of the best weapons of terror ever used. Radiation freaks people out, because they don't understand it, can't see it, and can't really do anything about it. Terrorism don't have to cause damage to be effective, all they have to do is cause terror. The people/government does the rest.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I used to think I spent to much time on Slashdot, and that maybe I should cut back.
This "beta" could be just what I need to help me quit Slashdot.
That relies on a model of people as scared animals instead of what often seems to happen in real disasters and in wartime. We've also been influenced by dozens of TV shows where radiation is seen as something safe for X minutes then a death sentence beyond, even if reality is very different to that. I don't think people would freak out as much as they would with the threat of nerve gas, chlorine etc etc or a normal bomb.
Yet with a dirty bomb attack the only people likely to benefit are those already in power by gaining more power as a result. As with any weapon of mass destruction the only defence is attack, so once someone attempts to use it against you the only future defence is all out attack. So only useful for false flags, as in the Anthrax attack target at US politicians by, well, US politicians, in order to drive the vote for the Patriot Act or as it is in reality the non-Patriot totalitarian police state Act.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
"rotten, contaminated"
Citation would be useful here.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
From TFA:
No contamination resulted because the capsule (typically a small welded stainless steel container that holds a wire containing cobalt ) was not itself opened.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It it is irradiated, then it has ben exposed to ionizing radiation.
Something can get irradiated without getting contaminated (easy to see if the source of the radiation isn't radioactive material, e.g. an x-ray tube), but if it's contaminated, then it is usually also irradiated.
Every time the concept of dirty bomb is used in film, or TV or in TV news, it is hyped to the extrem. But do the journalist and media do their job to make people understand that panick would be the risk, and radiation not the risk ? nope. nope. Nope. Here is your media failure. Journalist informing people ? Forget it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The beta is awful, but it's the gamma that's the worst. Just ask the thieves. :(
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'