Australia | The missing radioactive capsule has been searched for in a 1,400 kilometer road area – The mining company apologizes

The radiation emitted by the missing little capsule is equivalent to ten x-rays per hour, so you should stay meters away from it.

A mining company Rio Tinto apologized on Monday for the loss of the radioactive capsule.

Capsule disappeared in a sparsely populated region of Western Australia between Perth and the remote mining town of Newman. The small capsule has been searched for with the help of radiation meters along a 1,400 kilometer long road, but the search has not yielded results.

“We understand that this is very concerning and we apologize for the concern we have caused to Western Australians,” said the Rio Tinto executive Simon Trott according to news agency AFP.

According to Trotti, the company has started an internal investigation into how the capsule could have been lost during transport.

Rio Tinto is a British-Australian mining giant whose operations have caused a stir before. In 2020, the company blasted the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge cave in the Australian Aboriginal region of Western Australia.

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Read more: Mining company: Blasting nearly 50,000-year-old Aboriginal cave was a ‘misconception’

Capsule is less than a centimeter in size, six millimeters in diameter and eight millimeters in height. However, according to Australian authorities, it contains so much of the cesium-137 isotope used in mining that it can cause radiation sickness, radiation burns and other long-term health risks such as cancer.

According to the authorities’ recommendation, a sufficiently safe distance to the capsule is at least five meters, because the radiation emitted by the capsule is equivalent to ten X-rays per hour.

Australian Health Authority by Andrew Robertson according to the transport package of the capsule was damaged during transport due to vibration and the capsule fell out of the opening left by the loose nut and out of the truck transporting it. The disappearance was noticed on Wednesday of last week.

Adjustment 30.1. at 2:31 p.m.: The capsule didn’t fall apart in transit, but its transport packaging did.

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