A dirty bomb wouldn’t “work”. As in it wouldn’t cause any more damage or fatalities than the explosives would on their own. You’d have to hang out at ground zero for a while to get radiation dosages that are dangerous, and other than having to clean the effective area like a super-fund site, the explosives are still the dangerous bit.
The Chernobyl disaster was similar to a dirty bomb, and no terrorist could hope in their wildest dreams to get that much nuclear material. But even with the scale of nuclear release, and gross mismanagement of the event, today the site is contained and safe to visit.
Nuclear is just scary, that’s it. I’ve often wondered if the whole idea of a dirty bomb was to get the terrorists to waste any nuke material they found.
I think the biggest concern is inhaling or ingesting the “dirty” material. Our skin does a pretty good job providing some protection against the low levels of the alpha emissions of depleted uranium. However, if you were too inhale or ingest, then you face direct absorption, which carries significantly higher risk.
A dirty bomb wouldn’t “work”. As in it wouldn’t cause any more damage or fatalities than the explosives would on their own. You’d have to hang out at ground zero for a while to get radiation dosages that are dangerous, and other than having to clean the effective area like a super-fund site, the explosives are still the dangerous bit.
The Chernobyl disaster was similar to a dirty bomb, and no terrorist could hope in their wildest dreams to get that much nuclear material. But even with the scale of nuclear release, and gross mismanagement of the event, today the site is contained and safe to visit.
Nuclear is just scary, that’s it. I’ve often wondered if the whole idea of a dirty bomb was to get the terrorists to waste any nuke material they found.
Safe to visit but not safe to live, rendering a major city effectively uninhabitable would be disastrous regardless of the death toll.
I think the biggest concern is inhaling or ingesting the “dirty” material. Our skin does a pretty good job providing some protection against the low levels of the alpha emissions of depleted uranium. However, if you were too inhale or ingest, then you face direct absorption, which carries significantly higher risk.