Durante Marco, Manti Lorenzo
Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Università Federico II, Monte S. Angelo, Via Cintia, 80126, Napoli, Italy.
Radiat Environ Biophys. 2002 Jun;41(2):125-30. doi: 10.1007/s00411-002-0156-5.
The possible use of radioactivity dispersal devices by terrorist groups has been recently reported in the news. In this paper, we discuss the threat of terrorist attacks by plutonium, with particular attention to the dispersal of plutonium by explosion or fire. Doses resulting from inhalation of radioactive aerosol induced by a plutonium explosion or fire are simulated using a Gaussian plume model (the HOTSPOT code) for different meteorological conditions. Ground contamination and resuspension of dust are also considered in the simulations. Our simulations suggest that acute effects from a plutonium dispersal attack are very unlikely. For late stochastic effects, the explosion poses a greater hazard than fire. However, even in the worst-case scenario, the dispersed plutonium would cause relatively few excess cancers (around 80 in a city of 2 million inhabitants) after many years from the explosion, and these excess cancers would remain undetected against the background of cancer fatalities.
近期新闻报道了恐怖组织可能使用放射性散布装置的情况。在本文中，我们讨论钚引发的恐怖袭击威胁，尤其关注钚通过爆炸或火灾的散布。使用高斯烟羽模型（HOTSPOT代码）针对不同气象条件模拟钚爆炸或火灾引发的放射性气溶胶吸入所导致的剂量。模拟中还考虑了地面污染和灰尘再悬浮情况。我们的模拟表明，钚散布袭击造成急性影响的可能性极小。对于晚期随机效应，爆炸造成的危害比火灾更大。然而，即便在最坏的情况下，爆炸多年后散布的钚导致的额外癌症病例也相对较少（在一个200万人口的城市中约80例），而且在癌症死亡的背景下，这些额外癌症病例将难以被察觉。
