There are a couple of reports of interest to local authority nuclear emergency planners in a recent Journal of Radiological Protection (Volume 40, Number 4, December 2020). These are part of the European Commission’s CATO mission which “proposes to develop a comprehensive Open Toolbox for dealing with CBRN crises due to terrorist attacks using non-conventional weapons or on facilities with CBRN material” (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/261693).
The first comes from the Belgium Nuclear Research Center with Carlos Rojas-Palma as the lead author (Carlos Rojas-Palma et al 2020 J. Radiol. Prot. 40 1205). This reports on a series of experiments in which mocked up Dirty Bombs of a variety of designs were detonated in urban-like environments. These used a number of tracers to represent the radioactive elements and a variety of detection and measure techniques to record the dispersion.
The report is constrained by security concerns so is unfortunately a bit coy about some of the important details.
Following a ground level explosion activity was found up to 5 m high on nearby walls and that the activity on the ground at 30 m was about 5 % of that at 9 m. They concluded that most of the dispersion was ballistic rather than turbulent. Whereas that might be true in this case, or even in most cases, it might not always be true; it could be assumed to depend on the physical form of the radioactive source and its packing and the force, temperature and geometry of the explosion.
The authors state that, in this instance, the radiological red zone would extend beyond a 50 m perimeter but, without any idea of the effective source strength and the blast being published the value of this observation is greatly reduced.
The paper suggests that any aid or movement of severely injured victims would ideally be performed by personnel in full protective equipment.
Airborne radiation levels can remain elevated for tens of minutes. This is affected by the weather conditions and the layout of buildings. Respiratory protection should be considered for anyone working in the red zone.
The levels of deposition on dummies placed in the vicinity of the blast suggest that decontamination will be needed for people within 50 m of the blast and monitoring, prior to release or decontamination, for those further out.
Deposition on walls was significantly lower than that on the ground but it is suggested that a thorough decontamination of the surrounding area would be needed to satisfy public demand.
For a device detonated in a car the distribution of ground deposition was rather random, making surveying and reporting harder and more time consuming. It was suggested that the fraction of radioactivity remaining in the vehicle would pose difficulties for forensic investigations.
This is a limited report of a series of careful experiments. It is to be hoped that the full results are available to, and explained to, the relevant emergency planners and first responders.
The second report, also with Carlos Rojas-Palma as the lead author (Carlos Rojas-Palma et al 2020 J. Radiol. Prot. 40 1286), discusses retrospective dosimetry to assist in the radiological triage of mass casualties exposed to ionising radiation. It suggests that the outcome of a terrorist event could be mass casualties with radiation exposure of individuals ranging from very low to life threatening and in numbers that surpass the capability of any single laboratory. Thus, it argues, an international network of laboratories would be needed. The European RENEB network is such a network (according to their website at http://www.reneb.net/ PHE is a member). A paper outlining their objectives is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09553002.2016.1227107.
This report discusses a series of exposure experiments with a 0.65 TBq and a 1.5 TBq Ir-192 sources, a bus and a collection of water-filled canisters and anthropomorphic phantoms. Detectors included a range of TLDs (Thermoluminescent dosimeter), OSLs (Optically Stimulated Luminescence) and body-temperature blood samples.
The project achieved three things: measurements of the doses that could be accrued by people sitting on a bus near an unshielded radioactive source, an inter-comparison of the reading of dosimeters by different laboratories and the evaluation of newly developed retrospective dosimetry methods. “Retrospective dosimetry” allows the doses of accidently exposed people to be measured after the event and can be used to inform the medical care they receive.