Investigating and analyzing the direct damage of alpha and protons particles on DNA caused by the explosion of a dirty bomb

With the widespread use of nuclear energy in industry and military fields, ionizing radiation affects humans more than ever. In nuclear terrorist acts, densely populated urban areas are considered the main target. One of the most deadly types of nuclear terrorism attacks is the use of dirty bombs in crowded and closed places such as subway stations and shopping centers. Ionizing rays are divided into direct and indirect ionizing rays in terms of the mechanism of action of ionization. Ionizing radiation with high linear energy transfer (LET), such as using alpha particles, can directly interact with biological targets to cause ionization and initiate a chain of events to produce biological changes. Geant4-DNA software was used to calculate direct DNA breakage caused by alpha particles and protons. For alpha particles with an energy of 1 megaelectron volts, the number of single strand breaks (SSB) and double strand breaks (DSB) has increased. Beyond the energy of 1 MeV, SSB and DSB had a decreasing trend. It was observed that SSB/event ratio is almost constant for protons and alpha particles at different energies. The analyzed results showed that in general, there is no significant difference between alpha particles and protons in the amount of SSB.