Mining
Cesium capsule in Australia: Radiation protection is now looking for it
Australian civil protection officers are trying to find a trace of the capsule with measuring devices. photo
© Evan Collis/DEPARTMENT OF FIRE AND EMERGENCY SERVICES/dpa
It has to be somewhere: an Australian mining company has lost a highly radioactive capsule just a few millimeters in size. The problem: The search corridor is hundreds of kilometers long.
Australia’s Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Authority (Arpansa) has joined the search for a missing radioactive capsule. The agency has sent experts to the west of the country to help with the search for the tiny capsule along a 1400-kilometer route with special equipment, the broadcaster 9News reported on Wednesday. Among other things, they were used with radiation detectors on vehicles.
The capsule, just a millimeter in size, fell off a truck while being transported from a mine north of the mining town of Newman to a depot near the city of Perth. The incident occurred sometime after January 12th. The fact that the capsule was missing was not noticed until January 25, when the truck was unloaded.
“We need to look at how these capsules are transported,” said Emergency Services Secretary Stephen Dawson. “It’s beyond me how something like that could fall off the back of a truck.” The British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto had already apologized for the incident. The corporation operates the Gudai Darri mine, from where the capsule was transported.
It is believed that vibrations caused a bolt in the container to loosen during travel and the mini-case fell through the bolt hole. The loss of the capsule containing the highly radioactive caesium-137, which was just six by eight millimeters in size, had caused great concern in Western Australia given the very dangerous material. Anyone who discovers something that looks like a tiny capsule should keep a distance of at least five meters, they said.