Radiation Safety Information Alert – WMD attack on US is 100% certain according to the FBI

The Assistant Director in charge of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate at the FBI puts the probability of a WMD attack on the US at 100%. Read about it here.

He is the most senior law enforcement official directly responsible for thwarting such an attack, and for responding in the event it happens. You would think he’d know the odds.

Do you agree with him? I do.

Now here is the real question – are you doing your job with this certainty in mind? Or have the cries of wolf diluted your diligence? Sure. it’s going to happen, but not here, not in my back yard. Let New York City and Washington, DC worry. Nothing will happen here in Maine or Louisiana or Utah.

That’s not true. Many of you know I write fiction, and my upcoming novel, The Rockets’ Red Glare, deals with a coordinated dirty bomb attack on the US. I’ve done the research, I’ve talked to the experts, and I picked my fictional targets using the same rationale as terrorists are likely to in reality. Want to know who gets it?

Missouri. Minnesota. Arizona. Washington. Michigan. And others just as improbable.

The point is this – the goal of your job is not to get a good grade on a FEMA exercise. The goal of your job is to save lives and property when this inevitably happens.

Please be prepared.

John Darrin
www.radsafeinfo.com

PS. We’re always looking for your opinion and information. Become an RSI contributor by contacting me at jcdarrin@gmail.com. Or simply respond to any post.

20 Government Tips for Surviving a Nuclear Attack

From AllGov.com
Monday, January 03, 2011

The Obama administration is working on new guidelines for the public to follow in the event of a nuclear explosion, whether it comes from a missile attack or a terrorist “dirty bomb.” The biggest challenge for government officials is figuring out how to educate Americans about surviving such a traumatic event without alarming people, especially since the main message they’ve crafted is: “Don’t panic, don’t flee the city, and find the nearest shelter available.”

An interagency working group has developed recommendations designed to help people survive the fallout from a nuclear explosion.

If you are too near the spot where a bomb is detonated, you will not survive. But by acting quickly, it is possible for many people to avoid the lethal effects of radiation that follow an explosion. Here are a few tips:

1. Find the nearest and strongest building you can and go inside to avoid radioactive dust outside.
2. If better shelter, such as a multi-story building or basement can be reached within a few minutes, go there immediately.
3. If you are in a car, find a building for shelter immediately. Cars do not provide adequate protection from radioactive material.
4. Go to the basement or the center of the middle floor of a multi-story building (for example the center floors (e.g., 3 – 8) of a 10-story building).
5. Put building walls, brick, concrete or soil between you and the radioactive material outside.
6. Increasing the distance between you and the exterior walls, roofs, and ground, where radioactive material is settling.
7. Stay inside. Do not come out until you are instructed to do so by authorities or emergency responders.
8. Stay tuned to television and radio broadcasts for important updates.
9. Radiation levels are extremely dangerous after a nuclear detonation, but the levels reduce rapidly in just hours to a few days. During the time when radiation levels are the highest, it is safest to stay inside, sheltered away from the material outside.

If you have been exposed to radiation, here are more tips:

1. Remove your clothing to keep radioactive dust from spreading.
2. You should act as if you are going home covered in mud and you do not want to track mud into your home.
3. Place your clothing in a plastic bag and seal or tie the bag. This will prevent the radioactive material from spreading.
4. Place the bag as far away as possible from humans and animals to limit exposure.
5. Removing the outer layer of clothing can remove up to 90% of the radioactive dust.
6. When possible, take a shower with lots of soap and water to limit radiation contamination. Do not scrub the skin.
7. Wash your hair with shampoo or soap and water.
8. Do not use conditioner on your hair because it will bind radioactive material to your hair, keeping it from rinsing out easily.
9. Gently blow your nose and wipe your eyelids and eyelashes with a clean wet cloth. Gently wipe your ears.
10. If you cannot shower, use a wipe or clean wet cloth to wipe your skin that was not covered by clothing.
11. Put on clean clothing, if available.

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/20_Government_Tips_for_Surviving_a_Nuclear_Attack_110103

Radiation Safety Information Reminder

Register for the upcoming NREP Conference

For all of us in the radiological emergency preparedness and response community, the most important meeting of the year is coming up in Orlando on April 18 – 21.

It’s the 21st National Radiological Emergency Preparedness Conference. For those of you who have attended past conferences, you know the incredible value of this event. For those of you who haven’t, it’s the don’t miss event of the year.

Registration opens at the NREP web site sometime in January, and this is a reminder to plan ahead to have the time and budget to attend.

NREP is the only conference of its kind, devoted entirely radiological emergency preparedness and response, and attracting experts and professionals from Federal, state, and local government, and from academia and private industry. You’ll hear the latest news, experience, and issues. You’ll see the latest innovations in products and services available to responders and their organizations.

And if you’re really lucky, you’ll see me. Or unlucky, depending on your point of view.

And if I’m really lucky, I’ll see you. Unless I owe you money, in which case I won’t be around.

Either way, it’s worth the trip. Tell your bean-counters I said so.

Radiation Safety Information Alert

MIT drill causes some controversy. Why?

As we reported on August 20, government agencies conducted a tabletop drill at MIT to focus on inter-governmental responses to an attempted terrorist attack to seize Co-60 for a dirty bomb. This rather innocuous article at the Boston Globe web site mentioned that “Government sources refused to discuss difficulties that might have emerged in the drill…”

We at RadSafeInfo.com didn’t find that phrasing to be particularly inflammatory. Drills are intended to discover difficulties, and governments routinely refuse to comment on them.

But David McIntyre, the Public Affairs Officer at the NRC, seems to have taken offense and wrote a rebuttal to the Boston Globe categorically denying that there were any security concerns. You can see both articles on the News tab. Just scroll down to the date and headline because the news just keeps on happening and the stories are in chronological order.

That same day, NextGov.com published a much more extensive and very positive article on the drill, even though it had taken place five days earlier. You can also find this article on our News page.

Why was there such a reaction from the NRC? And was the NextGov article coincidental, or related? We would like to hear from anyone with further information, questions, or comments. Simply “Leave a Reply” below.

John Darrin
www.radsafeinfo.com

PS. We’re always looking for your opinion and information. Become an RSI contributor by contacting me at jcdarrin@gmail.com. Or simply respond to any post.

The 1st Radiation Safety Information Challenge

We’re all about radiation safety here at RadSafeInfo.com, and what better archive of the perils of radiation exposure than Hollywood? So, we’re putting together a video of clips from all-time great radiation disaster movies and TV shows.

Remember The Amazing Colossal Man?
Or The China Syndrome?

So do we. Now we’re trying to find the ones we don’t remember, and we need your help.

Just send us anything that will help find any radiation-themed movies, TV shows, cartoons, billboards, etc. Titles, actors, plots, year, or even just hazy memories. The Internet is great for being able to track those down, and we’ll do it on the flimsiest piece of information.

We appreciate your help, and to show it, we’ll send free, signed copies of John Darrin’s techno-thriller SCREENSHOT to the first five responders. And at our selfish and arbitrary discretion, to any others that we find interesting or amusing. Personal pleas will be given special consideration.

Thanks for your time and help.

John Darrin, for everyone at www.radsafeinfo.com

PS. We’re always looking for your opinion and information. Become an RSI contributor by contacting me at jcdarrin@johndarrin.com. Or simply respond to any post.

Radio Interview

John Darrin was interviewed about the Radiation Safety Information web site for the Homeland Security Inside & Out show on National Public Radio’s KAMU station.

The 4-minute interview can be heard here.

Emergency Preparedness Rulemaking

Greetings. My name is Martin Vonk and I’ve been associated with the Nuclear Radiological Emergency Preparedness Programs since the early 1980’s. John asked me to participate, particularly in aspects related to Emergency Preparedness Rulemaking. I was involved in implementing the regulatory changes following the Three Mile Island Event, and I’ve remained involved to deal with the changes resulting from the lessons learned from the terrorist events occurring on September 11, 2001.

Like activities post-TMI, many regulatory actions were taken in the first few years following the 9/11 event directed by Federal authorities, but lacking formal rulemaking structure. The NRC is now in the process of formalizing those changes and other changes developed by the staff.

This thread will attempt to follow the rulemaking. I’ll be posting updates and comments, and providing links to other source material. I welcome your questions and feedback.

Book Review – Inside NEST: America’s Secret Nuclear A-Team

Lawrence S. Wittner. Review of Jeffrey T. Richelson’s “Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America’s Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad”. Norton. 2009. 416 pages.

The vast destructive potential of nuclear weapons is not limited to wars, for nuclear devastation can be triggered by accident or by determined individuals. The good news purveyed by Jeffrey Richelson’s new book, Defusing Armageddon, is that the U.S. government has been hard at work for decades seeking to prevent such devastation. The bad news is that, in a world bristling with nuclear weapons and other nuclear materials, the possibilities for nuclear catastrophe are immense.

more…

The 30-Minute Professional

Radiation safety is no longer the province of radiation safety professionals. It used to be, and they still control much of the infrastructure that defines the process – scientists and technicians who specialize in the esoterica of radiation safety, designers and manufacturers of the equipment that is used, administrators who write the procedures and set the standards, regulators who make the rules from their offices, bureaucrats who grade readiness and performance based on play-acting.

I don’t mean to offend any of you, but it is simply not the real thing. There is no way to simulate the panic and chaos of a dirty bomb or nuclear device. A review of events such as Hurricane Katrina demonstrates that, just like in war, plans don’t survive the first volley. People don’t show up, equipment isn’t where it’s supposed to be, training is forgotten, who’s in charge?

The people whose cells are being ionized, the people who will actually wear the protective clothing, hold the instruments, use the tools, and do the tasks, are the same people who drive your kid’s school bus, dig the trench for the new sewer system, fix the transformer that blew during the electrical storm. They are all professionals. They just aren’t professional radiation workers.

When the dirty bomb goes off, when the terrorist weapon detonates, when whatever radiological accident or attack occurs, they’ll have about 30 minutes to become one. Not 30 minutes from when the event happens. Those 30 minutes, and many more after them, will still be the province of the radiation safety professionals.

The 30 minutes I’m talking about start when these new professionals park their bus at the scene to pick up evacuees, when their backhoe is driven off the flatbed truck and made ready to move rubble, when the electric utility truck arrives and all those downed wires have to be re-connected. In those 30 minutes, these new professionals have to learn everything they need to know to do their job in a hazardous new environment, and the hazard is invisible.

Here’s an example. What units of measure should the emergency worker’s radiation monitor read in? Should it be REM, or Roentgens; or Sieverts, or rads, or Grays; should it have multiple ranges, like a low range and a mid-range and an high range; should it be analog or digital or flashing LED’s?

Here’s my answer – who cares? There is only one unit of measure that these new professional radiation workers understand or care about – risk. Instruments should read out in percentage increase of contracting cancer, because that’s what’s important to them.

I know the reply some will have, and that is we need to know and record and analyze radiation readings in units that are scientifically meaningful and let the managers make and implement suitable plans. Well, that ‘s what computers are for. Let them convert the 0 – 10 scale on the bus driver’s dosimeter into a dose equivalent man. All the bus driver wants to know is that 1 is fine, and 10 means if you don’t leave now, they’ll be looking for your body in an hour.

That’s the 30-Minute Professional. This side on the rope is clean, that side is dirty. Leave everything dirty on that side. This is your dosimeter. Wear it always. When you hear the alarm or see the LED flash, leave. This is your radiation meter. When the needle leaves green and moves to yellow, you should be doing something very important if you’re going to stay there. When it moves to red, leave. Drag the wounded if you can, but leave or you’ll be one of them.

The radiation safety professionals don’t get this yet. They’re still trying to take the instruments and procedures and mind-set of the professional radiation safety worker and dumb it down for the new draftees.

It won’t work.

Start fresh.