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It sounds to me like it's only a simple "nope" if the only weapons you are worried about are nuclear weapons. Pu-238 could still be useful for radiological wea

It sounds to me like it's only a simple "nope" if the only weapons you are worried about are nuclear weapons. Pu-238 could still be useful for radiological weapons such as dirty bombs. If you're worried about them then it becomes a (slightly) more nuanced, "How many morgues do I have to raid, and can I do it before the authorities catch on to the Crematorium Bandit?"

Laforet 9y ago
From what I could gather, pacemakers contain up to 4 curies of Pu-238 which is less than 300mg of pure metal. Enough to poison a few people but nowhere near enough to create WMD considering the effort. Industrial radiation sources, in contrast, typically contains tens and sometimes hundreds of curies of mostly undecayed cobalt or iridium isotopes, and is usually much less guarded.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Covered in the article, though the author suggests even less Pu. A supplier could have a few few devices in a warehouse, but nowhere near the numbers described. > a pacemaker has only around 135 mg, if I did the conversion from curies correctly. Even so, if I were in charge of keeping plutonium out of the wrong hands, I would still worry about this. It does not seem totally out of the realm of possibility that someone could collect 25,000 pacemakers. Opening 25,000 titanium capsules does sound rather tedious.
- littlestymaar 9y ago
  I wouldn't be enough to kill many people, but if a certain amount (even non-dangerous, like 1µS/h) of radiations were detected in all Manhattan, the panic would cause lasting damages.
godelski 9y ago
The threat of dirty bombs is pretty low, there's a reason they aren't used. They are extremely hard to obtain, and don't add a significant amount more deaths (if the blast didn't kill you, the radiation will probably not. Though definitely send you to the hospital). They work great as weapons of terror, and there is a lengthy cleanup process, but there's a reason that they aren't common. The people working on the device are also more likely to die, and more easily caught. The materials are difficult to obtain, but definitely not impossible. It just probably isn't worth the time and effort when you could more easily make and/or obtain more conventional explosives. This is all assuming the smaller type of explosives used in acts of terror.

Laforet 9y ago

From what I could gather, pacemakers contain up to 4 curies of Pu-238 which is less than 300mg of pure metal. Enough to poison a few people but nowhere near enough to create WMD considering the effort. Industrial radiation sources, in contrast, typically contains tens and sometimes hundreds of curies of mostly undecayed cobalt or iridium isotopes, and is usually much less guarded.

lostlogin 9y ago
Covered in the article, though the author suggests even less Pu. A supplier could have a few few devices in a warehouse, but nowhere near the numbers described. > a pacemaker has only around 135 mg, if I did the conversion from curies correctly. Even so, if I were in charge of keeping plutonium out of the wrong hands, I would still worry about this. It does not seem totally out of the realm of possibility that someone could collect 25,000 pacemakers. Opening 25,000 titanium capsules does sound rather tedious.
littlestymaar 9y ago
I wouldn't be enough to kill many people, but if a certain amount (even non-dangerous, like 1µS/h) of radiations were detected in all Manhattan, the panic would cause lasting damages.

godelski 9y ago

The threat of dirty bombs is pretty low, there's a reason they aren't used. They are extremely hard to obtain, and don't add a significant amount more deaths (if the blast didn't kill you, the radiation will probably not. Though definitely send you to the hospital). They work great as weapons of terror, and there is a lengthy cleanup process, but there's a reason that they aren't common. The people working on the device are also more likely to die, and more easily caught. The materials are difficult to obtain, but definitely not impossible. It just probably isn't worth the time and effort when you could more easily make and/or obtain more conventional explosives. This is all assuming the smaller type of explosives used in acts of terror.