Australia confirmed on Wednesday the discovery of a radioactive capsule that disappeared in January when it was transported in the west of the country, which led to the declaration of a health alert within a radius of hundreds of kilometers.
The Australian authorities reported on Wednesday that they have recovered the tiny radioactive capsule lost by the Rio Tinto mining company in a vast and complicated search for this material that can be deadly.
“I want to stress that this is an extraordinary result (…) The search teams literally found the needle in the haystack,” The head of Emergency Services in the state of Western Australia, Stephen Dawson, declared at a press conference.
The representative of the regional government specified that the device, 6 mm in diameter and 8 mm high, was found this morning regarding 50 kilometers south of the city of Newman, where a truck picked it up days ago to transport it to the city of Perth. , a route of regarding 1,400 kilometers.
The small capsule was found between stones in the ditch regarding two meters away from the Great Northern Highway, where a car equipped with special devices for the detection of radiation – traveling on the road at regarding 70 kilometers per hour – discovered the emitted for the capsule.
The teams established a security perimeter of 20 meters around the object to proceed “safely” to its recovery and it was placed in a lead container, which protects from radiation.
The capsule was sent back to Newman, where it will be stored until Thursday when it is moved to a center in Perth, the capital of Western Australia.
Australia on alert
Members of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) examine the area where the capsule was found to “make sure it is not contaminated” due to the risk of radiation leaking out.
The tiny capsule contains a “small amount” of the radioactive substance Cesium-137used in mining, and was lost while being transported between January 10 and 16, the Western Australia Department of Health previously explained.
Authorities warned, in a previous alert, regarding the risks of exposure to this toxic substance, which include “radiation burns or radiation sickness,” such as cancer.
Although today they assured that it is “improbable” that someone was exposed to radiation because it was far enough from the road and from any population.
“It does not appear to have been moved, but rather fell from the truck,” Andrew Robertson, director general of the Western Australia Office of Health, told the media.
The toxic material was packaged on January 10 and the vehicle arrived in Perth six days later, but it was not until the 25th that cargo inspectors realized that one of the packages was torn and one of those tiny letters capsules had been lost on the way.
The radioactive device is part of a density gauge that had been used at Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri mine in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia.
The Western Australia Radiation Council has opened an investigation to determine how the radioactive capsule might have been lost, although it has not specified when it will publish its final report.