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   [2]Calculating the cost of dirty bombs

   Posted: 24 Feb 2009 09:46 PM PST

   cesium-137

   One of the more frightening scenarios that civil defence teams worry
   about is the possibility that a bomb contaminated with radioactive
   material would be detonated in a heavily populated area.

   Various research teams have considered this problem and come to
   similar conclusions-that the actual threat to human health from such a
   device is low. Some even claim that terror groups must have come to a
   similar conclusion which is why we've not been on the receiving end of
   such an attack. The panic such a device would cause is another
   questions.

   Today Theodore Liolios from a private institution called the  Hellenic
   Arms Control Center in Thessaloniki in Greece, goes through the
   figures.

   He says the most likely material to be used in such an attack is
   Cesium-137, widely used throughout the developed and developing world
   as a source for medical therapies.

   The unstated implication is that it would be relatively easy to get
   hold of this stuff from a poorly guarded hospital. Exactly this
   happened in Goiania in Brazil when an abandoned hospital was broken
   into and its supply of cesium-137 distributed around the surrounding
   neighbourhoods. The incident left 200 people contaminated. Four of
   them died.

   But a dirty bomb would not be nearly as lethal. The trouble with them
   (from a terrorist's point of view, at least) is that distributing
   radioactive material over a large area dramatically reduces the
   exposure that people receive. Particularly when most could be warned
   to stay indoors or be evacuated (unlike the Goiania incident in which
   most people were unaware they were contaminated).

   Liolios calculates that anybody within a 300 metre range of a dirty
   bomb would increase their lifetime risk of cancer mortality by about
   1.5 per cent. And then only if they were unable to take shelter or
   leave the area. That's about 280 people given the kind of densities
   you expect in metropolitan areas.

   And he goes on to say that it is reasonable to assume that a
   cesium-137 dirty bomb would not increase the cancer mortality risk for
   the entire city by a statistically significant amount.

   But the terror such a device might cause is another question. Liolios
   reckons that current radiation safety standards would mean the
   evacuation of some 78 square kilometres around ground zero. That would
   affect some 78,000 people, cost $7.8m per day to evacuate and some
   $78m to decontaminate.

   That seems a tad conservative but however it is calculated, it may
   turn out to be chickenfeed compared to the chaos caused by panic,
   which may well result in more deaths than the bomb itself could claim.
   How to calculate the effect of that?

   Ref: [3]arxiv.org/abs/0902.3789: The Effects of Using Cesium-137
   Teletherapy Sources as a Radiological Weapon

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References

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   3. http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3789
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