Australian authorities are celebrating the retrieval of atiny radioactive capsuleafter an urgent seven-day search.
“We have essentially found the needle in the haystack,” Western Australia’s Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner (DFES) Darren Klemm said in astatement Wednesdayabout the search, which covered almost 900 miles of remote roadway.
“When you consider the challenge of finding an object smaller than a 10-cent coin along a 1400-kilometer stretch of Great Northern Highway, it is a tremendous result,” he said before thanking all the agencies involved in the large-scale operation.
“This was a great example of working together to achieve an outstanding result,” Klemm added.
HANDOUT/Department of Fire and Emergency/AFP via Getty
“To be at risk of radiation exposure you need to be close to the source for a period of time,” Robertson said. “If you were one meter away from the source for one hour, that would be the equivalent of receiving the radiation dose of 10 X-rays,” he added in a statement.
According to the DFES,the capsule was packagedon Jan. 10 to be transported to the city of Perth for repair. The package holding the capsule arrived in Perth on Jan. 16 and was stored in the licensed service provider’s secure radiation store.
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On Jan. 25, the gauge was unpacked for inspection but when it was opened, it was discovered that the gauge inside was “broken apart with one of the four mounting bolts missing and the source itself and all screws on the gauge also missing.”
The DFESissued an urgent warningFriday evening for parts of the Pilbara, Midwest Gascoyne, Goldfields-Midlands and Perth Metropolitan regions along the Great Northern Highway because of the missing capsule.
The object is only 6 millimeters (or less than a quarter inch) in diameter and 8 millimeters (less than a third of an inch) tall — about the same size asan Australian 10-cent piece, according to DFES.
Simon Trott, the chief executive of mining company Rio Tinto Iron Ore who was transporting the capsule, previously apologized for the incident. “We are incredibly grateful for the hard work of everyone involved in finding the missing capsule,” he addedin a statement Wednesday.
“While the recovery of the capsule is a great testament to the skill and tenacity of the search team,” he continued, “the fact is it should never have been lost in the first place. I’d like to apologize to the wider community of Western Australia for the concern it has generated. We are taking this incident very seriously and are undertaking a full and thorough investigation into how it happened.”
Police said the incident appeared to beaccidental and no criminal chargesare likely to be filed, per the Associated Press.
source: people.com
