Nuclear Terrorism

Another report that the bearded loons (umm, no, not the Greens, the other lot) are trying to get their hands on some nuclear materials so as to indulge in some nuclear terrorism.

The most likely terror device using nuclear material is a "dirty bomb", where conventional explosives are fitted with radioactive material.

The thing is that such "dirty bombs" aren't in fact all that effective at killing people. No more effective than a bomb without the radioactive bits, that's for sure. No fission takes place (and certainly no fusion), all that happens is that whatever radioactive material they managed to steal is spread over a wider area.

And, as anyone who knows anything about radioactivity will tell you, dispersal of it means that the effect weakens: disperse it enough and it won't harm anyone. We are, after all, surrounded by radiation all the time and even a whacking great big dirty bomb in Trafalgar Square might raise the level you're exposed to on the National Gallery steps to the, quite scary (!?), levels that you're exposed to in Cornwall each and every day.

There are indeed some medical scaries (cobalt 60, caesium 137) which could kill you if you came into close contact with them....but if they're blown into a fine dust and spread over acres the effect would be akin to taking one or two extra plane flights in terms of exposure.

These dirty bombs are thus no where near as awful as people seem to think....Roosevelts "We have nothing to fear except fear itself" is appropriate here. But then since that first set of bearded loons have been telling us for decades that there merest whiff of radiation will kill us all they've been creating the effectiveness of a dirty bomb for the second set.