Nuclear weapons are explosive devices whose force comes from a nuclear reaction: fission (atomic bombs) or fission and fusion (thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs). Fission and fusion reactions—as in the detonation of uranium-235 and/or plutonium-239—release huge amounts of energy compared to conventional weapons. The atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima (Little Boy, perhaps named for Franklin D. Roosevelt or J. Robert Oppenheimer) is estimated to have released an amount of energy equivalent to about 16,000 tons (16 kilotons) of trinitrotoluene (TNT). Many modern nuclear weapons are 500 times more powerful, equivalent to 10,000 kilotons. One would have to explode 10 million tons of TNT to release the same amount of energy as in a single modern nuclear weapon.
Although Little Boy, a uranium-235 bomb, weighed almost 5 tons, the amount of uranium-235 it contained was only about 175 pounds (80 kilograms), and the amount of matter converted into energy was only 0.0015 pounds, about the weight of 30 grains of rice (about 700 milligrams). The Nagasaki atomic bomb, Fat Boy (perhaps named for Winston Churchill or Brigadier General Leslie Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project), contained plutonium-239 rather than uranium-235. Fat Boy’s explosive force was equivalent in energy to about 21 kilotons of TNT. It instantly killed 60,000 to 80,000 of the 240,000 inhabitants of Nagasaki and injured 80,000, fewer than Little Boy. Fat Man was detonated over Nagasaki because the sky over Kokura City, the intended target 96 miles away, was clouded over. There were fewer fatalities because the bomb was not detonated at the optimal altitude and the hilly terrain of Nagasaki (it resembles San Francisco and Genoa) shielded residents in low-lying areas from the worst effects of the explosion.
Casualty numbers from the atomic bombs are startling, but it is important to compare their effects with those of conventional weapons. As we detailed, the numbers of people killed by the atomic bombs are not vastly different from the numbers of people killed by the firebombings of Tokyo (probably more than 100,000) and Dresden (about 25,000) during World War II using conventional bombs.
There is considerable misunderstanding about how nuclear weapons kill or injure people. They kill most people in the same way conventional bombs do: by generating concussive forces (shock waves) and by igniting superfires. As we saw in chapter 2, these effects accounted for about 90 percent of deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. About 50 percent of the energy released by the A-bombs was blast energy, about 35 percent was thermal energy, and only about 15 percent was radiation, most of it neutrinos that did not contaminate the area. What makes nuclear weapons distinct from other weapons is the large number of immediate fatalities from a single source. Radiation is unique to nuclear weapons, and it is estimated to have caused about 10 percent of the early (but not immediate) deaths in Japan. Also, while radiation exposure from the atomic bombs unquestionably increased cancer risk in the survivors, the proportion of cancer deaths attributed to A-bomb-related radiation is only 8 percent of all cancer deaths over the past 65 years (about 550 out of 6,300 cancer deaths). This is because most of us have a 38 to 45 percent chance of dying from cancer without excess radiation exposure, depending on gender.
Since the atomic bombings in August 1945, more than 2,000 nuclear weapons have been detonated by the United States, the successor states of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, probably Israel, and possibly North Korea. These countries are estimated to have about 20,000 nuclear warheads, of which about 25 percent are immediately deployable. Most of these weapons are fission-type bombs, but some countries also have fusion-type weapons, commonly referred to as hydrogen (H-)bombs or thermonuclear weapons.
Fission-type nuclear weapons use conventional explosives to force subcritical masses of enriched uranium-235 or plutonium-239 together to start an uncontrolled self-sustaining chain reaction. The idea is to convert some of the matter in the bomb into energy before the device disassembles itself. In addition to releasing tremendous amounts of energy, these weapons release large amounts of radionuclides (called fission products) that constitute the radioactive fallout.
Fusion-type nuclear weapons are more complex. Here a fission-type device is used to trigger a fusion reaction between hydrogen isotopes (usually tritium and deuterium). The fission reaction compresses the fusion material and then superheats it by reflecting the X-rays and gamma rays released from the fission reaction.
It is also possible to coat a nuclear weapon with materials that will increase the amount of radioactive fallout released. This type of weapon might be most attractive to a nuclear terrorist.
Integral to the development of nuclear weapons is the development of weapons delivery systems. These can be relatively simple, like the gravity-triggered bombs detonated over Japan by aircraft, or very complex, such as land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which can be in fixed position (in underground silos) or mobile, such as on missile trains. Cruise missiles can be deployed from submarines that can constantly change their position, or from fighter aircraft. Canon-fired nuclear artillery was tested at the Nevada Test Site but never deployed. Deployment of nuclear weapons from space has also been considered but (thankfully) not yet successfully implemented.
Each of these delivery systems has specific purposes. Nuclear weapons dropped from bomber aircraft can be very large, but deployment is delayed because of the plane’s relatively slow travel speed (about 15 times slower than an ICBM). A low flight path altitude can make the bomb-carrying plane easy to intercept. Also, with really big bombs, the plane has to distance itself quickly from the detonation site to avoid being blown up or exposing the crew to radiation. ICBMs launched from missile silos travel much more quickly than planes and are more difficult to intercept because of their high altitude. But silos can be targeted by the enemy unless they are “hardened” against such an attack. The likelihood that nuclear weapons deployed by ICBMs will be intercepted can be decreased by loading each warhead with multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs). Submarine-based missiles cannot be easily targeted but must be much smaller than gravity bombs or land-based ICBMs. Most nations use a combination of these delivery systems to maintain a vigorous strategy of nuclear deterrence, although they may favor one over another.
The health consequences of the development of the current nuclear weapons arsenals are considerable. The aboveground detonations between 1945 and 1963 released substantial amounts of radionuclides into the environment, often referred to as radioactive fallout. Radioactive fallout comprises fission products (including cesium-137, iodine-131, and strontium-90), as well as unfissioned uranium-235 and plutonium-239, vaporized by the tremendous heat of the fireball. These products form a suspension of fine particles about 40 millionths of an inch, or about the size of some viruses. These submicroscopic particles are immediately drawn upward into the stratosphere and spread over the entire hemisphere where the explosion occurs. (Winds of the hemispheres rarely mix, so atmospheric nuclear tests in the northern hemisphere affect only people in the northern hemisphere and contrariwise.)
Most of the fission products released by nuclear bomb testing were short lived and posed few health consequences. However, some were moderate to long lived and have caused, or will cause, important health consequences from exposure to iodine-131, cesium-137, and strontium-90.
A striking example is what happened to sailors on the ironically named Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon) fishing boat, which was just outside the danger zone of the Castle Bravo H-bomb explosion on the Bikini atoll in March 1954. For several hours after the detonation, fallout, including coral that had been made radioactive by the nuclear explosion, rained on the sailors as a white dust. Almost immediately, the crew developed symptoms of acute radiation sickness, and the captain died within seven months. There also was concern about radioactive contamination of fish, especially tuna, similar to what happened and continues after Fukushima. The U.S. government paid $2 million in reparations to Japan because of the Bikini blast.
The United States’s H-bomb tests near the Bikini atoll contaminated the Rongelap atoll, whose inhabitants had to be evacuated for several years. Several of them developed thyroid abnormalities, including thyroid cancers. (It was notoriety about the 1946 Operation Crossroads A-bomb test at Bikini atoll that led French engineer Louis Réard to name the swimsuit he invented the “bikini.”)
Public concern over radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing and proliferation led to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which banned the tests, and to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which imposed further restrictions on nuclear technologies. In 1996 many nations signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits the testing of nuclear weapons, thus, at least in theory, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to compliant nonnuclear states. Unfortunately, several key states (India, Pakistan, and North Korea) have not signed the treaty, and other states have signed but not ratified the treaty, including the United States, Israel, and China. Between 1959 and 2010, the United States entered into at least two dozen treaties, including the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) I and II, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), the new START, and the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives. Most of these treaties have not been ratified but have helped reduce nuclear arsenals. The U.S.-Russian Megatons to Megawatts program has removed 18,000 warheads from the Russian stockpile and converted highly enriched uranium into material used in U.S. nuclear energy facilities to produce 10 percent of America’s electricity. Sadly, this 20-year program will end in 2013.
In 1986 there were 65,000 nuclear warheads worldwide. By March 2012 the number that are operational was reduced to fewer than 4,200, including 1,492 under Russian control and 1,731 under U.S. control. This 95 percent decrease reflects a landmark change in human behavior. Rarely, if ever, in history have adversaries voluntarily given up hugely powerful weapons to such an extent. Perhaps the awesome destructiveness of nuclear weapons underlies this action, or perhaps it is gradual evolution, the moderation of human behavior, or some combination of these factors. Regardless, we are left with the paradox that the development of nuclear weapons of tremendous destructive potential has prompted the largest voluntary disarmament in history.
Neutrons’ ability to penetrate deeper into human tissue than other ionizing radiations was not lost on weapons makers. In 1958, in the midst of the Cold War, when densely populated Europe was a potential battleground, the physicist Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) at the University of California’s Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (now Lawrence Livermore Laboratory) proposed a new type of nuclear weapon, the neutron bomb, or enhanced radiation weapon (ERW). In this device a conventional hydrogen bomb would have its uranium casing removed, allowing more neutrons (with a significantly longer range than charged particles) to escape. They could penetrate even highly shielded buildings or armored tanks with a lethal dose of radiation, because whereas other ionizing radiations, such as protons and alpha particles, can be stopped by lead or other high-density material, neutrons easily penetrate them.
The strength of the blast from a neutron bomb is about half that of a hydrogen bomb, but the amount of radiation released is almost the same—thus a greater fraction of the total energy released—and travels farther; even so, the local blast effect is still in the range of tens or hundreds of kilotons of TNT. But physical destruction is not the point of a neutron bomb. It is meant to guarantee large-scale human death while inflicting less harm on structures. It was designed to kill soldiers who were otherwise protected, and it would be particularly effective against armored tanks. Neutrons would turn their hardened steel protection into a deadly liability by interacting with the uranium and making the tanks radioactive.
The United States, Soviet Union, and France developed neutron devices—the first was successfully tested in 1962 in the United States—but they have not been deployed because of a moratorium on nuclear testing and strong opposition (especially in West Germany, which was a likely battleground) arguing that these bombs made the use of nuclear weapons more likely.
The effect of neutron exposure on humans has been demonstrated in deadly criticality accidents at least seven times. A criticality occurs when enough fissionable material (called a critical mass) is present for a chain reaction, and all the radiation associated with a fission reaction, including neutrons, is released. The first two criticality events took place at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1945 and 1946, when scientists accidentally caused uncontrolled nuclear reactions called a Cherenkov radiation reaction, named for the Russian scientist and 1958 Nobel Prize winner Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov (1904–1990), who was the first to do a rigorous study of the phenomenon. Cherenkov radiation is what gives the blue glow to the water around fuel rods in a commercial reactor because of the slowing down of electrons
Neutrons are part of a nuclear reaction and so are present in nuclear facilities. On September 30, 1999, workers at a nuclear fuel–processing plant in Tokaimura, 70 miles north of Tokyo, were moving uranyl nitrate; it is the compound of uranium that results from dissolving the accumulated material on spent nuclear fuel rods in nitric acid. The workers accidentally put more fissionable material into a vat than they should have, and the result was a criticality. Uranium atoms release neutrons at an enormously high speed (called fast neutrons) that is generally not very effective for propagating a chain reaction. But water in the vat into which the uranyl nitrate was placed slowed down the neutrons and caused them to be more effective in sustaining a chain reaction. The criticality continued in a series of pulses, so the radiation ebbed and flowed for about 20 hours and ended only after workers drained all the water from the cooling tank. In all, 667 workers at the plant and nearby residents were exposed to varying amounts of radiation. The three operators who were moving the uranyl nitrate received doses of 3,000, 10,000, and 17,000 mSv, the latter two considered fatal. Seven workers received doses of 5 to 15 mSv, and one nearby resident received more than 20 mSv. Because of his experiences in Chernobyl and Goiânia, Bob was called to Tokyo. He worked with Shigeru Chiba and Kazuhiko Maekawa at Tokyo University and Hideki Kodo and Shigetaka Asano at the Institute of Medical Science to treat the three most severely affected workers.
It takes time and tests to discern whether only gamma radiation has been released or whether neutrons were involved as well. One of the workers reported that he had seen a blue light, suggesting Cherenkov radiation, in which huge amounts of neutrons are released along with gamma rays. (Early nuclear scientists courted danger in assembling a critical mass, approaching criticality without reaching it, which would cause certain death to the experimenter. They called it “tickling the dragon’s tail.”)
As soon as the worker reported seeing the blue light, the area was evacuated, and the worker was taken to a room near the scene, where he lost consciousness for one minute and vomited within ten. Diarrhea developed within an hour and continued for two days. As there is no explosion or other overt sign of a criticality accident, doctors had to check whether sodium-24 was present in the victim’s body to determine whether he had received only a massive dose of gamma radiation or had been bombarded by neutrons as well.
Of the many radionuclides we have in our bodies, sodium-24 is not among them. It is produced when neutrons strike the large amount of nonradioactive sodium-23 (salt) in our body, converting it to radioactive sodium-24, which has a half-life of about 15 hours. To determine whether there was a neutron release from the accident, the worker’s urine and sweat were collected and tested; sodium-24 was detected.
Because of the high doses of radiation the victims received, the Japanese medical team and Bob tried to save them by replacing their destroyed bone marrow. They transplanted blood cells from siblings or blood cells obtained from the umbilical cords of unrelated children. Although the transplanted cells effectively replaced bone marrow function in the victims, the exceptionally high doses of radiation to the lungs and gastrointestinal tract caused irreversible, ultimately fatal, damage.
The all-encompassing lethal effects of a neutron bomb are not in question. Nor are the same effects of global thermonuclear war. Immediately after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people saw that atomic weapons could mean the end of humankind. But according to the late historian Paul S. Boyer (1935–2012), when the Cold War became the norm of international politics and the missile stockpiles of the United States and Soviet Union assured both mass destruction and mutual deterrence, the threat of “instant incineration” somehow became acceptable—or rather, was ignored. The threat from nuclear weapons far outweighs the potential danger of an accident at a nuclear power facility. But perhaps because the large-scale use of nuclear weapons would cause such cataclysmic damage to life on Earth, it is easier to worry about smaller events.
National security agencies believe that most state-controlled weapons are out of the reach of terrorists. Instead, they worry that terrorists might try to make their own “atomic bomb” using fissile material that has been stolen or diverted to them. And many of us worry about what might happen if terrorists acquired a small amount of radioactive material and set off a “dirty bomb” (officially known as a “radiological dispersal device,” or RDD). A dirty bomb is as explosively destructive as an improvised nuclear device but spreads radioactivity over a small area, injuring some and panicking many. The radiation spread by the loose cesium-137 in Goiânia in 1987 was one of the world’s worst radioactive contamination accidents and created many of the effects of a dirty bomb, without an explosion.
Still, the Goiânia incident serves as an indication of what could happen if terrorists were to set off an RDD in a large city. Around the world about 10,000 radiotherapy units that emit gamma rays from cesium-137 and cobalt-60 are used to treat cancer, especially in developing countries. Radiation therapy centers have on hand a substantial amount of radioactive materials, used for internal radiation therapy (brachytherapy), including cesium-137, cobalt-60, iodine-125 and -131, iridium-192, palladium-103, and ruthenium-106. Cesium-137, cobalt-60, and many other radionuclides are present at hundreds of thousands of industrial sites, universities, and research institutions. Finally, there are radioactive materials at many sites of deactivated nuclear weapons in the United States and ex-Soviet states.
As we saw at Goiânia, someone can steal a radiotherapy machine and remove the radioactive source. Having done this, terrorists could combine it (or several) with a conventional explosive device, which when detonated would contaminate an area of perhaps half a square mile.
Those victims of such a blast who had detectable radiation on their clothes or skin could be quickly decontaminated with thorough washing. The area where the blast occurred would suffer unacceptable radiation exposure, but this could be mitigated by decontamination—washing, shielding, and, if needed, short- or long-term evacuation. But relocating a radioactive source without being detected is not only difficult, it is dangerous, because once the shielding is removed, the radiation levels would likely kill anyone trying to put the material into an improvised bomb. (Ironically, the greatest danger likely would be to the terrorists handling the radioactive material, who would be the most seriously exposed. This, alas, is not a concern for a suicide bomber.)
A small dirty bomb would certainly release radioactive materials, but the greatest danger to people would be not the blast or the radiation but the widespread confusion and hysteria immediately afterward and the subsequent political and economic repercussions. Medical facilities would be overloaded by people with real or, more likely, imagined radiation sickness, and such pandemonium in one city would likely spread to other metropolitan centers, causing additional panic.
A blast using material from a radiation therapy machine or other device that contains a radioactive substance would likely kill or injure people nearby with the percussive force of the explosion or debris propelled by the blast. From a radiation standpoint, the victims would be unlikely to need much immediate medical intervention. Some scientists believe that the crude explosion of a pound and a half of cesium-137 by 4,000 pounds of TNT would so disperse the radioactive material as to render it nonfatal. A scientist with the International Atomic Energy Agency has said, “It’s hard to imagine any kind of dirty bomb producing the kinds of mass casualties that we saw on September 11 [2001].”
In fact, terrorists would not need to set off a bomb—they could just spread radioactive material around or smear it on buildings, though they would not then induce the panic factor that an explosion would cause.
None of this implies that the danger from a dirty bomb should be dismissed or the threat not be taken seriously. But bombs aside, the unhappy fact is that radiation spills occur often, and they are cleaned by high-pressure water and special fluids. Plutonium could be cleaned up as well. Most anticipatable radioactive contaminations can be cleaned up if you are willing to spend the time, money, and effort.
Bob and Alexander Baranov wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2011 that policy makers and the public must be educated about what radiation from such a device can and cannot do. Under almost all scenarios, it is better not to evacuate nearby buildings. Rather, people should stay inside (or get inside as fast as possible), close the windows to avoid breathing outside air, shower to wash off as much contamination as possible, and not eat food that could have been exposed to radioactive particles. Evacuation—opening the buildings and decreasing the shielding they offer—usually increases exposure of those near the blast. If there is a radioactive plume, people should stay indoors until it has passed. If there is ground contamination from radioactive material, they should stay indoors until a measurement of the radioactivity is made and an orderly evacuation planned. The point is to avoid panic. People rushing every which way in an attempt to escape will only lead to greater injuries and radiation exposure. As the nuclear weapons expert Bennett Ramberg wrote to us in 2012, in many ways an RDD is more “a weapon of mass distraction than of mass destruction.”
In Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril, Ramberg describes the possibility of a nuclear power facility being bombed by conventional explosives, allowing for the release of a massive amount of radiation. (In 1981 Israeli military planes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor, but it was under construction and had no nuclear fuel and thus released no radiation.) He details how prior to the attacks on September 11, 2001, governments showed too little concern over this vulnerability, not only for nuclear but for chemical facilities, and quotes a report of Great Britain’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution: “The vast increase in the chemical process industry over the last few decades has created many industrial plants where the consequences of damage from armed attack could be extremely serious. The unique aspect of nuclear installations is that the effects of the radioactive contamination that could be caused are so long lasting. If nuclear power could have been developed earlier, and had it been in widespread use at the time of [World War II], it is likely that some areas of central Europe would still be uninhabitable because of ground contamination by caesium.”
A 2005 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service notes that nuclear power plants “were designed to withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, and other extreme events, but attacks by large airliners loaded with fuel, such as those that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were not contemplated when design requirements were determined.”
The nuclear industry’s response is that even if there were such an attack, penetration of the reactor vessel holding the nuclear fuel is unlikely, and that a “sustained fire, such as that which melted the structures of the World Trade Center buildings, would be impossible unless an attacking plane penetrated the containment completely, including its fuel-bearing wings.”
A terrorist assault on a nuclear power facility could induce a meltdown and trigger a release of radiation. To help thwart this possibility, an April 2003 order from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) states that preparation from an attack must “represent the largest possible threat against which a regulated private guard force should be expected to defend under existing law.” Nuclear facilities regularly conduct exercises in which personnel respond to multiple attack scenarios. The vulnerability of nuclear power facilities is a continuing concern, although in the decade since the 9/11 attacks, security has improved.
To focus solely on terrorism as the means to spread radiation is to miss the larger point that radioactive material exists all over the world and that it is used, stored, carried, and sometimes misplaced and forgotten about by human beings. Humans are guaranteed to make errors. The Goiânia story is not an isolated example of highly radioactive material being mishandled. In late 1983, in Juárez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas, there was an incident remarkably similar to that in Goiânia. An electrician, unaware of the danger, opened a discarded radiation therapy machine capsule filled with cobalt-60 he had collected in his pickup truck, and in driving to his junkyard scattered radioactive pellets on the road.
The bulk of the cobalt-60 pellets were mixed with scrap and taken to two foundries, where the metal was made into table legs and reinforcing rods for construction. In all, thousands of tons of metal were contaminated. The radioactive metal went undetected until a truck carrying a load of it in New Mexico made a wrong turn near the Los Alamos National Laboratory, tripping a radiation alarm. Officials tracked down the remaining objects in several states and in Canada, as well as rebar used in hundreds of new homes built in at least four Mexican states.
The accident released about 100 times the radiation that escaped from the Three Mile Island nuclear power facility and exposed more than 200 people to low but significant doses of radiation over a long period. It is considered perhaps the worst spill of radioactive material in North America.
Stories such as these occur with alarming frequency. In 1998 the International Atomic Energy Agency organized the first conference devoted to the safety of radiation sources and the security of radioactive materials. The conference was cosponsored by the European Commission, the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), the World Customs Organization, and the French Atomic Energy Commission. The reports showed how often radioactive material is mishandled, lost, or simply overlooked.
The NRC is notified of about two hundred lost or stolen radioactive sources each year. Since 1983, twenty of them have been melted at steel mills or other foundries and recycled into new metal. The NRC considers these instances to be only a small fraction of the devices that have been improperly recycled, even though many scrap dealers and metal recycling plants have radiation-detecting equipment, often at their front gates. Nonetheless, small pieces of radioactive material can sometimes pass through several detection checkpoints before being discovered. Because of the high cost of detection equipment, only about half of all scrap dealers in the United Kingdom have installed it or at the least possess hand held detectors to monitor their inventory. (The problem is likely considerably greater in less developed countries.)
In 1998, at an iron smelting plant near Cádiz, Spain, a medical machine containing cesium-137 passed through monitoring equipment undetected and was melted along with all the other products in the smelting process. The resulting gases were released through the plant’s chimney (equipped with radiation detectors, which were not working) and dispersed into the atmosphere. Temporary radiation measurements of 1,000 times normal were detected by monitoring devices in France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany. Between 1982 and 1984, scavenged radioactive metal was melted into rebar and used to construct about 2,000 apartment units in northern Taiwan. One report states at least 10,000 people received long-term, low-level radiation and several died. An analysis suggested an increased cancer risk for residents. These data are used to argue that low doses of radiation exposure over a long interval can cause cancer.
In Russia, Bob experienced firsthand the consequences of an errant radiography machine. Modular units used to construct buildings are stacked one atop the other and then are subjected to a nondestructive testing technique called radiography, to ensure the steel is uniform in strength and that the joints are proper. Field radiography generally uses a strong radioactive source that emits gamma rays; it is placed on one side of an object, and photographic film is placed on the other side. The process is akin to taking an X-ray, but it is done with radioactive materials rather than a radiation-producing device such as an X-ray machine. One typical source of radioactivity in a radiography machine is iridium-192 (which has a half-life of about 74 days). These machines are purposely designed to be portable and so might easily be stolen to construct an RDD. (More radiation accidents can be attributed to industrial radiography than to any other use of radioactive material.)
During the construction of a prefabricated apartment building in Kharkov in the 1980s, a machine that used cesium-137 to examine the units detached from its tether and, somehow unnoticed, was incorporated into a concrete slab that became a bedroom wall of an apartment. Families who lived in the apartment became ill and moved out. Others took their place but also fell ill. Brothers who shared the bedroom and slept with their feet to the wall with the radioactive source in it developed skin rashes and ulcers on their legs and eventually bone marrow failure. The older brother, who also developed a bone cancer (osteogenic sarcoma) of his ankle, died. Residents and local authorities blamed these health problems on bad luck. Eventually Bob’s Russian colleague Alexander Baranov heard the story. He immediately understood that the cause might be radiation poisoning. Inspectors were sent to the apartment and quickly discovered and recovered the radioactive source embedded in the wall. One child and his mother were promptly hospitalized and treated.