Tuesday
(0)Vanguard Response Systems, a Canadian company, is now testing equipment for containment and mitigation of the effects of radiological weapons.
This type of weapon, now commonly mis-labeled a 'dirty bomb', is a conventional explosive device packed with bits and bobs of medical or other radiological sources in place of bolts and nails. Such bombs would kill few if any persons not killed in the initial blast. They are weapons of mass annoyance rather than destruction and have entered the WMD lexicon due to the modern phobia of all things 'nuclear'.
Vanguard supplies various sizes of containment 'tents' which are placed around the weapon. The tents are then filled with a foam. Should the device explode, the kinetic energy is soaked up by the foam and tent. They claim all of the bomb fragments are thus contained.
Is this a good thing, because if a dirty bomb is discovered and thus blanketed it can be cleared up with little fuss? Or is it a bad thing, because it encourages the view that elaborate containment is needed, and thus fortifies the panic when an unblanketed d/b does explode?
I tend towards the latter view. Any actual d/b will be mostly harmless but attended by months of hullabaloo and exclusion for decontamination, and years of extra pseudosecurity and increased insurance premiums, while plastics factories continue to catch fire and scatter poisonous by-products sensibly unremarked. Cf the contrasting treatment of rail crashes and motorway pile-ups.
Posted by Guy Herbert at June 15, 2004 04:07 PM
