Ummm. . . all you people fretting over the "dirty bomb" please read this.

[Brian_Expat]

Dirty bombs are a hoax with no radiological danger even when the most severe radioactive materials available are used.

People who sunbathe on southern California beaches get more radiation in a year than someone who is 1/2 a mile from the worst possible dirty bomb explosion twice a year.

The media know this, the Boston Public Health authorities have noted this for years, but curiously, the media hasn't reported the truth -- that "dirty bombs" are a silly scare tactic out of a bad Clancy novel.

Read and learn and then get annoyed that you're being manipulated.

http://www.cosmiciguana.com/archives/003254.html

The latest post-9/11 disaster scenario making news headlines is the "dirty bomb." The theoretical situation occurs when terrorists get hold of radioactive material from a hospital or food-irradiation plant, attach it to an explosive, and detonate the bomb in an urban area. The explosion spreads the radioactive material all over a city and exposes the population to radiation. Yet according to a health physicist, the biggest health risk from a dirty bomb would not, reassuringly, be cancer, but something more preventable: panic.

A dirty bomb "would probably not lead to many, if any, cancer deaths," says Andrew Karam, radiation safety officer of the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. But if the public receives unreliable or exaggerated information about dirty bombs, Karam worries that "the use of a radiological weapon would result in many deaths in traffic accidents as people flee the scene, and possibly stress- and anxiety-induced heart attacks."

The radiation dose from a dirty bomb would likely be relatively small, says the Rochester health scientist. Even a potent dirty bomb, consisting of a radioactive cobalt-60 rod used for food irradiation, for example, would deliver an average dose of a few tenths of a rem for people within a half-mile radius, he says. (A rem is a unit of radiation dose.) This compares to the 0.3-0.4 rem average dose per year that a person receives from natural sources...

[killbotfactory]

1. It's a psychological weapon

Tell people an area is covered in radioactive waste, and they will avoid it like the plague. All it's good for is to create panic.

[Brian_Expat]

2. It's a psychological weapon for the Bushies. . .

. . . even the word "dirty bomb" is conceived to create panic. It's like the "missile gap" from the Cold War. Totally artificial and designed to work people into irrational panic so they're easily controlled.

[Solon]

3. Plus, with the exception of a lot of talk...

the amount of devastation would be limited to the initial blast, and if you are are exposed enough, it will not be an instantly fatal dose. Your cancer risk may rise 10% because of it, but then again, you run that same risk drinking soda.

Also, as people should know by now, would-be terrorists are smart, they know how to do a job with minimal risk of being caught, and with little real cost to them, money wise at least. Think about it, they brought down two buildings with box cutters for crying out loud. Does anyone really think that they would go through all the risk and expense to smuggle radioactive material that a geiger counter can pick up at port or a border for limited terror possibilities?

Which is the more likely scenario, trying to smuggle foriegn objects into this country for limited effect. Or using home grown fertilizer to bring about an explosion on our soil. Did they have to import those box cutters, or did they get them at Home Depot?

[Up2Late]

4. Yeh, and depleted Uranium tipped bullets and shells ...

are a GOOD idea and NO danger too!

I don't thinks so.

<http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/uranium/index.html?leftNavInclude>

Warning: If the link below takes you to VERY Graphic Photos of Iraqi Babies who Mothers were exposed to Depleted Uranium from the First Iraq War 1991. DO NOT Click this link if you are NOT a Heartless Warmonger.

<http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/du/>

[yankeedem]

5. This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode

Where Kramer tried to bring down the Mexican clothing store by taking all the dessicants out of the clothes.

Five, ten years, we'll REALLY be in trouble.
If this is true.

[rumpel]

6. what is a greater threat, the deregulation of power plants or dirty bomb?

analysis
Nuclear Plant Risk Studies: Failing the Grade
in clean energy


An accident at a US nuclear power plant could kill more people than were killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.1 The financial repercussions could also be catastrophic. The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant cost the former Soviet Union more than three times the economical benefits accrued from the operation of every other Soviet nuclear power plant operated between 1954 and 1990.2

But consequences alone do not define risk. The probability of an accident is equally important. When consequences are very high, as they are from nuclear plant accidents, prudent risk management dictates that probabilities be kept very low. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) attempts to limit the risk to the public from nuclear plant operation to less than 1 percent of the risk the public faces from other accidents.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) examined how nuclear plant risk assessments are performed and how their results are used. We concluded that the risk assessments are seriously flawed and their results are being used inappropriately to increase -- not reduce -- the threat to the American public.

and many more articles at:
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/nuclear_safety/page.cfm?pageID=181