No there is not. You think portable battery powered X-ray machine has plutonium or something in it?
Well, I know there is some machine that has an element in it.
Interesting point, if I were to get an X-ray at the doctors, and count that towards my dose limits, I would be close to the limit of dose the industry allows me in a year. My original point was, it is not difficult to accumulate radioactive material in the civilian world to use for a dirty bomb. A single hospital would provide enough of it to make a pretty nasty dirty bomb.
On the reasons a dirty bomb is not as scary to me, is the media portrays it as a cheap nuclear bomb. It is anything but. With no nuclear explosion, you have no massive amounts of radiation being put out, no fall out, etc. You just have a very contaminated area where the explosion happened, but that can be cleaned. As long as the response was quick, there would be hardly any long term radiation doses to the public.
During my time in the nuclear industry, I have had contamination on me, and in me. If I have it on me, we wash it off, if it was serious enough that a good washing could not remove it, you could remove particles by simply cutting them out. When I ingested or breathed in contamination, you flush it out naturally.
Not saying by any means it would not be a devastating and deadly situation, but compared to the horrors of nerve gas and other agents, damage from a dirty bomb would be rather minimal compared to a chemical\biological attack. Mostly due to the fact radiation is generally only deadly in very large acute doses, or over an extended time. A typical dirty bomb the media portrays, would not have enough radiation to kill from acute doses. As long as officials could clean people and areas within a reasonable time, the effect would be negligible.
# February 1, 2000 – The radiation source of a teletherapy unit was stolen from a parking lot in Samut Prakarn, Thailand and dismantled in a junkyard for scrap metal. Workers completely removed the 60Co source from the lead shielding, and became ill shortly thereafter. The radioactive nature of the metal and the resulting contamination was not discovered until 18 days later. Seven injuries and three deaths were a result of this incident.[25]
