It was not long ago that we had office buildings and even homes lined with Americium-241 smoke detectors. A small amount in each, but to be sure, that’s an alpha emitter with a half life of 432 years, which screams “nasty”. Not something I’d ever dare to touch with my bare hands or risk inhaling. And you could probably have gathered together enough of it to make a dirty bomb if you simply stole a big shipment of those detectors. As others have said, it would likely mostly cause panic and disruption than actual harm, but that’s kind of the point—the ones most likely to suffer harm from radiation would be the terrorists opening up the detectors to gather the material, ironically.
Honestly Thorium itself sounds positively tame by comparison, and any nuclear fuel shipments likely far more well defended.
It was not long ago that we had office buildings and even homes lined with Americium-241 smoke detectors. A small amount in each, but to be sure, that’s an alpha emitter with a half life of 432 years, which screams “nasty”. Not something I’d ever dare to touch with my bare hands or risk inhaling. And you could probably have gathered together enough of it to make a dirty bomb if you simply stole a big shipment of those detectors. As others have said, it would likely mostly cause panic and disruption than actual harm, but that’s kind of the point—the ones most likely to suffer harm from radiation would be the terrorists opening up the detectors to gather the material, ironically.
Honestly Thorium itself sounds positively tame by comparison, and any nuclear fuel shipments likely far more well defended.