Radiation detection is really good. You would never get the device into the country.
There have been people pulled over in the DC area after undogoing chemotherapy. In one case it was a small dog.
There have been people pulled over in the DC area after undogoing chemotherapy. In one case it was a small dog.
Considering that chemotherapy is chemical, I'm not sure what it would have to do with radiation at all. Presuming you meant radiation treatments, those do not leave the patient radioactive at all.
In general, to the best of my knowledge, detecting items with radioactivity levels mildly above background inside a moving vehicle from the street is not practical, even theoretically, based on the probable lack of difference in radiation level outside the vehicle.
Aside, google has gotten worse than useless. In a first ever I had to scroll through a full page of cancer treatment ads. Zero organic results on the first page. Even then it needed careful tweaking to get Google off the “treatments for cancer” train of thought.
Was not able to find the dog story I remembered. Google wants to show me either national security or cancer treatment but not the intersection.
Not categorically true, even with external beam radiation therapy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25271934
Other kinds of treatment can leave the patient significantly radioactive, for example brachytherapy, which involves direct implantation of radiation sources in tissue.
Nevertheless, I would still find it pretty surprising if any of these sources could be reliably detected from inside a moving vehicle by a stationary sensor. Or that cases of these medical treatments would not be overwhelmed by other incidental sources of radiation being slightly higher or lower than usual.
I don't work on these systems, obviously - those who do aren't talking - and this is just idle speculation. But I do know that lots of DHS money is shoveled into R&D on this kind of thing every year and I would not be surprised if some of the tech does work.
If someone were smuggling a radioactive weapon into DC, couldn't they just shield it with a lot of lead?
I'm guessing that your small-dog example would have been different if it were in a thick lead crate.
It's really not hard to hide both neutron and gamma emissions, especially if you have a large enough container, like a ship's hold.
I would absolutely expect any nuclear exchange to start with ground-based stealth attacks.
It is a form of radiotherapy.