Two stories back to back over weekend that raised eyebrows

[Bandit]

First story is fifty pounds of highly radioactive material missing from nuclear reactor. Second story was terroristslooking to set off dirty bomb in USA. There is no way in hell that corrupt agents of America could actually use a nuclear device. We pretty much know about all of them and could tell where the device originated. It would be impossible to identify radioactive material especially some reported missing from our own sources. A dirty bomb would literally terrify America and certainly take up all the airspace in our media. Bush* would use it for his politics. I feel that is what is in store for America. It is Bush*'s only chance as things stand at this point in time. I personally feel that if he runs on the theme that only he can protect us and yet fails to do so by allowing a dirty bomb to be set off it will backfire on him but people are not well in America and can be led to believe almost anything the media tells them.

[salin]

1. a great deal of news is being pushed off the front pages

I would be very interested in reading these two stories.

[chelsea0011]

2. Is this a US reactor?

[jpak]

10. I believe it was Vermont Yankee (missing fuel rods)

don't have a link though...

[whistle]

3. Is anyone at the administration checking with the CIA...

...to see who they might have given the 50 pounds of radioactive material to? Maybe they should check Karl Rove's garage.

[denverbill]

4. What's the big deal about a dirty bomb anyway? Who cares?

Seriously, if someone set off a dirty bomb in my parking lot 100 feet away, I'd move downwind and take a shower and not go back to work until the radiation was removed.

It would be expensive, and a pain in the ass, and maybe, maybe I'd die an early death from cancer, but most likely I would be just fine.

I read an article several years ago about Chechen terrorists putting radioactive waste in the Moscow park. They put it there and nobody knew it was there. Finally, they called the cops and reported it was there. Cops went and picked it up. End of story. No mass panic. No significant threat to health. Nothing.

Anyone who is seriously concerned about a dirty bomb should be more concerned about industrial pollution that already exists and will continue to exist.

[seventhson]

5. Utter Bullshit

radiation is killing people sloooooowwwwwwllllllyyyyy globally (and some quickly, especially in the womb)

see radiation.org

My family suffers from a radiation pollution induced and doctor diagnosed thyroid disorder.

To minimize the danger borders on criminal stupidity IMHO. My children have been made ill. Pregnant women will have spontaneous abortions and infants will die due to ecposure in utero.

Have you not seen this weeks studies on goddamn DENTAL XRAYS harming fetuses?

Jesus help us with attitudes like this we will all die of cancer and hormonal diseases and collapsed immune systems.

see www.radiation.org for more info

THEY are on the money and this scenario is serious indeed.

Remember; Halliburton is a NUCLEAR proponent and attitudes like these are spread by them


also Halliburton, unlike niger and iraq, actually HAS the means to make dangerous dirty bombs and deliver them in the US.

[denverbill]

9. I know very well that radiation CAN be dangerous.

Radiation only poses a threat due to either very high dosage short-term exposure or low-dosage long-term exposure. A dirty bomb doesn't pose either threat.

If you exploded a dirty bomb in Madison Square Gardens full of people, yes, then you'd get quite a few people getting a high level short-term exposure.

If you exploded one on a Denver street, only people immediately next to the bomb would get high-level contamination. People living in the area would have to leave until the contamination was cleaned up. And that can be monitored with geiger counters.

I'm not discounting the threat of radiation. But radiation is at it's deadliest when the threat isn't known about. Terrorists would be better off spraying radioactive dust from an airplane than blowing up a bomb.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[denverbill]

13. Here's what a dirty bomb would do.

He told BBC News Online: "It's hard to imagine any kind of dirty bomb producing the kinds of mass casualties that we saw on September 11."
...
Casualties would be taken to reception hospitals supplied with decontamination equipment, protective clothing and specialist monitoring devices.

They would be washed to get rid of exterior radioactive contamination and treated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2037769.stm

-------------

While radiological attacks would result in some deaths, they would not result in the hundreds of thousands of fatalities that could be caused by a crude nuclear weapon. Attacks could contaminate large urban areas with radiation levels that exceed EPA health and toxic material guidelines.

http://www.fas.org/faspir/2002/v55n2/dirtybomb.htm

---------------
If a relatively tiny "dirty bomb" -- one containing only ten pounds of TNT and pea-sized amount of cesium-137 -- were detonated in Washington, federation scientists recently told Congress, "The initial passing of the radioactive cloud would be relatively harmless, and no one would have to evacuate immediately."

"However," the scientists continued, "residents of an area of about five city blocks ... would have a one-in-a-thousand chance of getting cancer. A swath about one mile long covering an area of forty city blocks would exceed EPA contamination limits, with remaining residents having a one-in-ten thousand chance of getting cancer. If decontamination were not possible, these areas would have to be abandoned for decades."

http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,53110,00.html?tw=wn_story_related

[denverbill]

14. More 'what a dirty bomb would do'.

According to Michael Levi, the physicist who managed a Federation of American Scientists' (FAS) study into the effects of a dirty bomb explosion, protecting yourself after such an attack is a matter of getting indoors, showering, and not eating contaminated food or breathing open air. As he put it: "It's really a matter of closing your windows and waiting for instructions."
.....
Dr. John W. Poston Sr., professor of nuclear engineering at Texas A&M University, and chairman of a committee that produced a study on dirty bombs for the national Council on Radiation Protection, contends that the dispersal method used in such a device would so dilute the radioactive material involved as to make any radiation doses incurred non-fatal.

http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/dirty-bomb.cfm

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."

http://www.aip.org/isns/reports/2002/038.html

----------------------------

OK, that's the first 5 links from googling 'effects of a dirty bomb'.
Where are all the links showing how awful they are? I know they must be out there.

[Beam Me Up]

6. You MAY be speaking rationally, but REASON IS IRRELEVANT HERE!

No, I mean it. The point IS, something like this could be a MAJOR DISTRACTION in the media as a diversionary and divisive tactic.

[Bridget Burke]

8. But you're sane! How would the media report a "dirty bomb" incident?

The "dirty" part would probably be added to an explosion larger than the (hypothetical) one in your parking lot. So, there would be images of damage & casualties. Would the newspeople approach the situation calmly--telling everybody what steps were being taken, giving sane advice? Or would they go into full panic mode?

We're all at greater danger from industrial carcinogens than from the possible dirty bomb. (I live in Houston, Texas!) But the industries are owned by Bush supporters & corporate news doesn't give us any of those nasty details.

[seventhson]

7. Links?

need links please. thanks

[seventhson]

15. I urge everyone to read this and then go to www.radiation.org

http://www.euradcom.org/2003/execsumm.htm

www.radiation.org

[Oddman]

16. Scary

Scary, scary . . .

[seventhson]

17. What is worse, Oddman, is that we are a nation of Ostriches sinking...

our heads into radionuclear sludge slopped everywhere by these idiots (the same idiots who are running the abu ghraib prison, i.e. Halliburton, Cheney et al)

I would not have been sensitized to this if I had not grown up in a nuclear community (near Brookhaven and other nuke facilites leaking into the groundwater and Long Island Sound) where I and my wife and children were exposed to radiopollution and got sick.

My wife got terribly sick and miscarried my child after a bad leak in which most of the community became ill (from an "unknown" cause which illness followed within hours of a major accidental leak within a hundred yards of residential communities - it was military accident, actually in a nuclear facility housed nearby - I resided less than a half mile from the accident and became very ill)

In later years my wife and children and myself exhibited unusual symptoms whixh turned out to be a damaged hormonal, metabolic and immune system whish our doctor said was correlated to the fact that we often swam at a beach which was polluted from nuke plant effluents washing ashore (but undetectable without a geiger counter -- the beach looked pristine and beautiful - only our sickness gave it away)

My guess is that Cheney will unleash a cache of their waste and blame it on Osama and cells in the US sometime during the republican conventionin NYC

This plan was developed by Nixon in 1972 for the contingency if Watergate was going to bring him down (bomb the repub convention in SF declare martial law, and postpone the elction). I think this was a rumsfeld/howard Hunt, etc. plan.

Could they use a series of dirty bombs to sabotage the election?

I would bet they would try if they think they can get away with it.

If NY is hit again in September or just before with such a device and the conventions are disrupted - the BFEE Riechstag Fire brigade will have all the shit they need to lock up every last one of us here at DU and reinstall their Fuehrer with additional fascist powers.

While those of us who resist get sicker and sicker from the radiation (which I believe they have developed biological protection for in terms of antiradiation supplements like potassium iodide, etc.)

Scary is right. Worst case scenario (short of a nuke war).

Are they capable of this?

We'll see.

[seventhson]

18. kicker