Radioactive capsule searches in Australia
Australia, mining company loses radioactive capsule in desert. The authorities: “Worrying situation”
In the desert of Western Australia, a huge sparsely populated region of the continent, a Cesium-137 capsule the size of a watch battery has been lost since mid-January. The responsibility lies with one of the largest mining companies in the worldRio Tinto, which is now frantically looking for it together with government authorities, before the object causes damage.
Australia, search underway for the radioactive capsule lost in the desert
The capsule has a diameter of 6 millimeters, and inside it contains a small amount of a byproduct from the nuclear fission of uranium: the company reports that the capsule probably fell from a truck, and they suspect that the vibrations of the vehicle have led to a loosening of some screws which led to the radioactive capsule coming out of a package and slipping out of a crack.
The object was lost along a journey of approximately 1,400 kilometers and its transport was the responsibility of a third party company that had been contracted by Rio Tinto. The courier had left on January 12. It had arrived at its destination on the 16th and on the 25th the company reported the loss of the capsule. “We are taking this incident very seriously. We recognize that this is clearly very worrying and we are sorry for the alarm it has caused in the Western Australian community – Simon Trott, head of the iron ore division, said in a statement – We have completed the radiological investigations of all areas of the site where the device was located and we examined the roads within the mine site and the access road leading away from the Gudai-Darri mine site,” he concluded.
An image of the capsule is below – pic.twitter.com/pbbtfZWEN9
— Chief Health Officer, Western Australia (@CHO_WAHealth) January 27, 2023
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