An impressive find : That tiny radioactive capsule

**LINK**

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-64481317

MichaelG.

They certainly found the needle in the haystack. Being radioactive probably made it a bit easier and a sensor that picked it up at 40mph.

Mike

Which all leads to the question, why was it not in its proper container?

Being so small you would not carry anything that size, radioactive or not, without something to put it in!

It was shipped in it's holder which broke after one bolt out of four fell out securing to the truck. Caused by road corrugations I guess.

Apparently too hot to pickup as all they have done is cordon it off

A good catch, finding that again. A danger with these radiation sources is that they tend to be shiny and people have been known to take them home & put them next to their bed, if they discover one.

One place that I worked had some pictures on the wall of someone who had found one of these and put it in the breast pocket of his shirt to take home. The subsequent radiation burns were quite severe.

Not surprised it was found , that is one mean item of radio-activity to avoid, at all costs.

IF as dangerous as stated then finding it was unlikely to be hard - just time consuming due to the area to be searched. I was involved in a similar incident in the Indian ocean in the 80s. Back ground radiation would be enough to frighten most people if they were aware of it ! Noel.

The size of a pea but emitting a huge bonfire of energy by the side of the road

They put something like that into the 1977 Voyager craft which are still going ok

It was a 0.5 Curie (16 Gigabecquerel) gamma emitter so not too hard to find with the right kit. I have a gamma spectrometer with a 2 liter Sodium iodide (NaITl) detector which would do the job if carried on a car driving at around 30-40 MPH. That detector was surplus from the 2012 London Olympics where it was part of a portal detector.

The source that was lost was not the most hazardous type. Those are the ones used for industrial radiography (Xrays) and older medical radiotherapy devices. The lost source appears to have been part of a level or density gauge. Basically it is in a lead lined stell housing and project a beam of gamma rays across a container to a detector on the other side The signal strength indicates the density of the material between the source and detector.
The sources have shutters to turn off hte beam and these often get stuck of the housing get loose due to vibration. It seems likely that the cover(s) that allow replacement of the source came loose and the source fell out. The person who packaged it for shipping is likely at fault.

There were two worst case outcomes for this. First was someone picked it up and put it in their pocket causing radiation injury. Second, more likely and more costly is the capsule was breached by being run over and the contents (probably a ceramic compound) spread allong the road and on vehicles. This woul require extensive and expensive de-contamination. I note that none of the new releases mentioned the second case.

Robert G8RPI

When I was an NDT Technician we regularly used radioactive isotopes of much greater intensity than the one featured in this case, our sources were similar in size and were stored inside a depleted uranium containment. They were portable and were carried in normal road vehicles when moved between sites. Our isotopes were used typically for radiographic inspection of aircraft engines, the isotope placed on one side of the engine and the film on the other side, we then retreated to a safe distance whilst the exposure took place. The information filtering out about the incident in Oz seems to point to extremely careless handling of a piece of equipment that requires great care, its container appeared to have suffered much neglect also. Radioactive sources like these are being moved continually by road everywhere, hospitals and industry mainly, we have to have faith in respect of those involved having been trained correctly and behaving responsibly. Dave W

The country it was lost in looked much the same as this. Not much out there. They drove along the road at 35mph with a detector and found it about 40 miles from the starting point.

I once lost a wheel trim on a similar car drive from Adelaide on the south coast to Alice Springs in the dead centre, about 1,000 miles. Kept an eye out for it on the way home three weeks later, and sure enough there it was in the scrub just off the side of the road. Stopped and put it back on, all good! There's nobody out there to pick stuff up.

The mining guys were very lucky in this instance that it did not fall off in town etc. But it turns out the fine for improperly storing or disposing of radioactive material is a whole $1,000 so no wonder they get careless. Of course the gumment is jumping up to "get tough" on it now.

It's so flat and empty out there the word scenic takes on a definition of its own: (That's the lookout, that gravel patch on the other side of the road!)

Edited By Hopper on 01/02/2023 23:11:32

Edited By Hopper on 01/02/2023 23:38:14

The detector I have is one of these:

https://mirionprodstorage.blob.core.windows.net/prod-20220822/cms4_mirion/files/pdf/spec-sheets/doc004728en-b_spir-ident-mobile-platform.pdf?1618426155

but without the fancy box. I was a bit pessimistic about it's capability. The chart on the last page indicates thet at 64 km/H (40 MPH) it will detect a 1.76 GBq Cs137 source at 100m. The lost source was nearly 10 times larger at 16 GBq.

Piece of cake with the right kit. It's not common kit. though It's also heavy, the detector weighs 18 kg.

Robert G8RPI

One can never be too careful with any radiation source. I found a Cyma WW2 military watch in a deceased watchmakers effects. This watch had Radium luminance and had been stopped for many years. What surprise me were the radiation "burns" clearly visible in the acrylic crystal where the hands had been "parked" for several years.

There has been various articles in horological magazines about the removal of radium from watches but no definitive procedure and particularly where it can bee safely disposed of.

Some horologists, believing the radium to be a "mild" source, have disposed of it in household waste assuming it would be quite safe in land fill. However doing this when increasing amounts of waste is going for incineration is very questionable if not illegal.

CS

Clive, having been involved in the waste disposal industry for some time, I can say without fear of contradiction that when people find out the cost of proper and legal disposal of any waste their interest in either concept evaporates ! All they want is it gone, they don't care about how or where ! This is not helped by the authorities charging considerable sums - and then just burying it with the household waste ! As the costs went up so did dumping ! Noel.

They are now investigating how the radioactive capsule 6mm x 8mm fell out of the instrument and then fell out of the container it was in through a hole where a mounting bolt had fallen out due to vibration on the rough roads out bush. Talk about Murphy's Law, but also sounds like protocols may have not been followed. Link

Edited By Hopper on 02/02/2023 11:10:40

Radium luminised items, particuarly aircrat instruments, are a bit of an issue. There is currently no disposal route for quantities in the UK it has to be stored. Very small amounts can be buried in designated low level waste site. This ensures they are well mixed with other material. For example some years ago the company I worked for disposed of a WWII era airspeed indicator. To go into low level waste it had to be split into two lots each in a 40 liter drum. One for the pointer the other for the dial. This was an expensive exercise.
To remove or do other work on the luminous parts of a radium luminised item as a business you need a licence. You also need a pemit to store more than a certain amount.

I remember, not that long ago when you could go to any airshow amd a lot of steam rallies abd buy any number of luminised instruments. I've even seen boxes of broken ones. That all changed with a couple of publicised cases. One was a major museum being prosecuted for displaying a radioacitve rock. Another was radium waste from historic burning of aircraft parts getting onto the beach at Dalgety Bay. They found it when looking for contamination form Sellafield.
Most airshows now have a ban on selling luminised instruments.

Robert.

Robert

I'm sure there are numerous "Spitfire" and "Lancaster" aircraft instruments and particularly clocks sitting on collectors shelves. I'm not sure what level of radiation they emit and whether this would be harmful. One problem is knowing if an instrument/clock has radium or the later phosphorescent paint. Old radium watches may no longer emit light , not because the Radium is inactive but because the material used to convert the radium's radiation into light has been bombarded to death and usually goes black or dark brown.

CS

I once spent 20 minutes repeatedly scrubbing my hands and setting off the radiation monitor until I realised it was my Swatch wrist watch. Took it off and threw it over the barrier, then not a flicker off the hand monitor. Not sure what current 'luminous' watches use, but they only glow for an hour or so till they need a recharge by exposing to light

I'm not going to get into health effects vs dose. However there is one particular issue with Raduim luminised aircraft instruments. Radium decays to Radon, a gas, which accumulates in the case of the instrument. For pressure operated flight instruments like altimeters and airspeed indicators there is a strong temptation to blow or suck on the ports. This can result in a lungful of Radon. This in turn decays to Polonium which stays in the lungs and further decays into radioactive lead. Even worse you may inhale a particle of Radium.

Hard to identify a Radium luminised instrument for certain without a geiger counter or similar. However for most the paint is fairly thick and takes on a yellow/brown nicotine like colour that is a red flag.
It's not just instruments, some radio paenl markings used it and there are convoy and deck edge markers that contain large enough quanities theat even in WWII they had warnings on them.

Robert.

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 02/02/2023 17:14:14

Go to joke shop and buy a cheap plastic glow in the dark skull ! Salvage flash gubbins from a camera ! Place flash gubbins inside skull ! Wire trigger to flash gubbins on a L O N G lead back to house (or hiding place). As victim has passed, trigger flash ! The flash will cause the victim to turn round to see skull glowing brightly but fast fading to a dull glow. Works like a charm ! Great for halloween. Never did grow up ! Noel.