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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (126343)	7/20/2005 2:54:56 PM
From: carranza2	Respond to of 793964

Probably the most convincing evidence is the fact that no terrorist group has used such a device or even credibly threatened its use I'm forced to disagree with this as a matter of logic, not as a matter of practicality, common sense or experience. The fact that something has not happened previously does not mean it may not happen in the future. Very few people thought the 9/11 attacks could be carried out but they took place. In addition, there was very little specialized expertise and know-how outside Russia, whereas portable nuclear devices were apparently very complicated in design and required highly skilled professionals to oversee their production and assembly. True enough, but money is and was no object. The talent to maintain these devices could be bought. But there is most definitely a nuclear threat, even if it doesn't necessarily involve an atomic bomb because a dirty bomb could cause much the same economic devastation and perhaps even more. All you need is the remnants of an old Third World radiation therapy machine containing Cobalt-60. It has happened before. See the story below. In fact, there was a lot more radiation exposure to individuals resulting from the Juarez incident including, ironically, to workers at Los Alamos than there ever was at Three Mile Island. The Juarez incident was the biggest radiation accident in the history of North America: americas.irc-online.org Samalayuca's Silent Steel Nearly 13 years ago, a cancer-therapy machine was removed from the Medical Center for Specialities in Ciudad Ju rez and taken to a Ju rez junkyard that later sold the machine along with other scrap metal to two steel foundries for recycling. The machine contained 6,000 tiny pellets of radioactive Cobalt-60, which contaminated thousands of steel rebars (used to reinforce concrete) and furniture parts. The contaminated steel rebars soon found their way to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where they triggered a radiation detector. An international effort to track down and retrieve all the deadly steel commenced. Radioactive rods and metal furniture were eventually recalled from 23 states and three other countries as well as from across Mexico. Mexican officials calculated that close exposure to the leaking cobalt-60 would be equivalent to absorbing 35,000 chest X-rays. Already one junkyard worker has died from a rare bone cancer, and others have suffered from sterility and skin discoloration. The recovered radioactive material was entombed in concrete in Samalayuca, 35 kilometers south of downtown Ju rez. Recently, however, some 150 tons of the material was trucked from an open field in a section of Ciudad Chihuahua called Nombre de Dios, dumped at the site, and left uncovered. The discovery of this fact has sparked protests within Ju rez, concern among the residents of Samalayuca, and offers of assistance from U.S. environmentalists. The protests, led by the Alianza Internacional del Bravo (AIB) of Ju rez and the Comit‚ de Solidaridad y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (COSYDDHAC) of Cd. Chihuahua, have halted the ongoing transfer of contaminated material to Samalayuca. The two groups plan to investigate the level of contamination of the Nombre de Dios site and the Samalayuca dump, using a geiger counter loaned via the Texas Center for Policy Studies. Cobalt 60 has an exceptionally intense gamma-ray activity, and environmentalists fear that it may leach into groundwater or be carried with dust to nearby agricultural and residential areas, according to F‚lix P‚rez of the AIB. According to the Mexican nuclear safety commission, the cobalt is one-fourth as radioactive as it was a decade ago. The commission has not tried to argue, however, that above-ground, unlined storage is a safe disposal method.