FEATURE - A dirty bomb may not kill, but it sure would hurt
Date: 18-Mar-03
Country: AUSTRIA
Author: Louis Charbonneau
They asked what would happen if al Qaeda got one of the world's thousands of lost radioactive sources, attached an explosive like dynamite and exploded it in a major urban centre.
Britain said in January it had evidence that al Qaeda, widely thought to be behind the attack that toppled New York City's Twin Towers, had tried to develop such a bomb in the 1990s.
Wolfgang Weiss, head of radiation hygiene at Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection, prepared a hypothetical case study to show what would happen if a radiation dispersal device - popularly known as a dirty bomb - exploded in Munich.
The results, based on an imaginary bomb made with weapons-grade plutonium placed in Munich's Olympic Stadium, were superficially reassuring: there would probably be no deaths and the number of severely contaminated victims would be small.
"According to the calculations I did, the radiological impact would be very limited, though the wider impact to society would be large," Weiss told Reuters during the first global conference on dirty bombs.
Severe contamination would likely occur at the centre of the explosion in the stadium, which has a capacity of almost 70,000. He said that at five km (three miles) from the stadium, radiation levels would drop by a factor of 100, resulting in only mild exposure levels.
DANGEROUS, BUT NOT DEADLY
Disregarding damage from the explosion itself, Weiss said exposure for someone near the bomb "would require emergency medical treatment, but it would not lead to death".
If the radioactive material was caesium, a common easy-to-disperse radioactive powder used in medicine and agriculture, victims would be exposed to quite low levels.
"These models tell us that you wouldn't have to evacuate a huge city. You would concentrate on an area of a few kilometres," from the explosion, Weiss said.
But the bomb would cause panic, and it would be crucial for political leaders to behave calmly, to speak honestly and in clear, easy-to-understand language about the attack.
"It's not primarily a radiological problem which we'd face, it's a psychological problem and a problem that has to do with trust in a society in their leaders," he said.
Failure to handle the situation properly could turn a manageable crisis, which emergency response teams should be capable of managing, into a disaster.
But Weiss said specific case scenarios were not a good basis for preparing a government on how to respond to an attack.
"You have to be ready to be flexible, ready for everything. Reality is always different," Weiss said. "Before the events in New York on September 11, nobody thought it was possible."
Dirty bombs hit the headlines in May, 2002, when U.S. authorities captured Jose Padilla, an American al Qaeda operative, in Chicago, and prevented a dirty bomb attack.
But there has never been a dirty bomb attack, so scientists and policymakers still have no actual case to examine.
This is why Weiss and others look closely at a tragedy in southern Brazil considered to be the benchmark dirty bomb scenario. This case shows that while the number of deaths may be low, the long-term effects of such an attack could be severe.
GOIANIA: THE DIRTY-BOMB BENCHMARK
On September 13, 1987, two men in Goiania, Brazil were looking for scrap metal at a partly demolished medical clinic.
They found a radiation therapy machine containing a small canister of highly radioactive caesium powder. Unaware of what it was, they sold it to a junkyard dealer, who took the canister apart.
Within two weeks, local children discovered the glowing blue powder. Some even used it as body paint.
This quickly led to a catastrophe that was second only to the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. A total of 249 people were exposed, 10 were seriously injured and four died.
The long-term socio-economic effects were devastating. Goiania suffered a 20 percent drop in gross domestic product, whic