Going back to the dirty bomb issue, there was a lot of speculation, not a lot of citation about it. Here's an NRC fact sheet on dirty bombs:
Most RDDs would not release enough radiation to kill people or cause severe illness - the conventional explosive itself would be more harmful to individuals than the radioactive material. However, depending on the scenario, an RDD explosion could create fear and panic, contaminate property, and require potentially costly cleanup. Making prompt, accurate information available to the public could prevent the panic sought by terrorists.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/dirty-bombs.html
A more detailed paper:
We examined 36 attack scenarios and reduced them to two plausible
or likely scenarios using qualitative judgments. For these two scenarios, we conducted a project
risk analysis to understand the tasks terrorists need to perform to carry out the attacks and to
determine the likelihood of the project’s success. The consequences of a successful attack are
described in terms of a radiological plume model and resulting human health and economic
impacts. Initial findings suggest that the chances of a successful dirty bomb attack are about
10–40% and that high radiological doses are confined to a relatively small area, limiting health
effects to tens or at most hundreds of latent cancers, even with a major release. However,
the economic consequences from a shutdown of the harbors due to the contamination could
result in significant losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including the decontamination costs
and the indirect economic impacts due to the port shutdown.
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~winterfe/A ...n the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.pdf
It is interesting that they chose an attack on a port as the most useful - basically, they are maximizing the economic harm by shutting down a high bandwidth path for goods and services to flow. But the lifetime death toll (most due to latant cancers or the bomb) is only in the low hundreds, which is achievable with a good truck bomb with or without nuclear material in it.
While I realize the general public has a pretty high capacity for panic, one thing working against the terrorists is that cameras don't have geiger counters attached to them. The general public wouldn't even know an attack was a dirty bomb for probably a few days after it happened. And That's critical to maximizing the panic. Particularly if there are no acute cases of radiation poisining to increase the fear. If, a week later, people find out that it was a dirty bomb and the port needs to be shut down for a few months to clean it up (instead of a few weeks to secure and rebuild), I'm not sure the panic will be that great.
Unless the
bomb is set off in a very densely populated area, the
effects are likely to cause only a few fatalities and several
injuries. Acute radiation sickness might occur if
bystanders or emergency workers who rush to assist
blast victims suffer from prolonged exposure to highly
radioactive material. For example, during a 2004 dirty
bomb exercise held in Long Beach, emergency workers
rushed to the blast site, unaware of the radioactive
material and without protective clothing. Had
this been a real attack, they probably would have suffered
from some level of radiation exposure, though
most likely not in a range that produced acute radiation
effects.
I think I disagree with their reasoning because I don't think they've properly considered the impact of the ideology of the terrorists. Yes, they are interested in economic harm, but they are more interested in physical harm. For that reason, I think it is much more likely that they would try to attack a large crowd. There was a New Year's bombing attack foiled a couple of years after 9/11 (in Seattle, I believe). There was a scare that turned out to be nothing in Times Square this year. Mardi Gras would be another good target. For these scenarios, you maximize the immediate deaths, plus maximize the possibility for acute radiation sickness. People might not know the difference, but if they see video of people writing in pain with the headline "Dirty Bomb!" above it, they will think "radiation poisoning".
Bottom line, though, I think the actual harm potential of a dirty bomb is far too low for it to be considered anything special. And since there is so much unprotected Russian fuel out there, I think the whole argument is a smokescreen anyway: terrorists aren't going to try to steal our nuclear fuel to make a dirty bomb, so the dirty bomb risk has no bearing on whether we should use nuclear power.
