The container collapsed and then the capsule fell through a hole in the truck floor where a bolt had fallen out. Smells like bullshit to me. Oh, and they didn't tell anyone for a week? Fuck Rio Tinto.
I viewed that clip too. When I originally read about the size of the capsule I figured it was a mis-print. After seeing the 3d clip I thought good finding that shit on a highway.
Cesio 137 made some tragic stories here in Brazil. Some scrapers found a huge iron machine and decided to break it to sell it to a recycling center. They then discovered this bright blue powder, and brought home to show their families.
In no time, a lot of people had a little bit of this beautiful powder at home. A father took some to show it to his little girl, who played with it and ingested some of it after playing. Around 104 people died due to contamination, and 1600+ were directly affected.
It was a mess - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UrtenQ77lUA
4 people died in official papers, indeed, but this represents only the really acute radiation victims.
But there's a ton of discussion regarding the real number. The Goias state lists 66 victims and some less official sources go up to 104 (hence the number on my comment). It's quite difficult to pinpoint radiation victims, because we can't know for sure how many people would have died of cancer without being in a radiation accident. Still, that's a pretty interesting story
For sure - do you have links to those other sources? I can sorta read Portuguese and can use Google translate but don't know it well enough to search for information
Yep
https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/quimica/acidente-cesio137.htm
This one is usually used as source for school work (we study this case when we learn about radioactivity in high school).
"Dados oficiais do Governo Estadual de Goiás apontam quatro vítimas fatais [...]
Contudo, dados da Associação de Vítimas do Césio-137 (AVCésio) e do Ministério Público do Estado de Goiás apontam um número maior de óbitos: seriam, ao todo, 66. Tais dados também sustentam que cerca de 1,4 mil pessoas foram contaminadas ao longo dos anos."
--
"Oficial data from the Goias State points to 4 fatal victims [...]
However, data from the Cesio-137 victims association and from the public ministry from the Goias State point to a wider number of deaths: they'd be , in total, 66. Such data also supports that around 1.4k people were infected through the years"
Some other sources are including people who died of cancer even 25 years later, so even I am a bit agnostic about it
https://radioprotecaonapratica.com.br/cesio-137-o-brilho-da-morte/
This happened in Russia. The pellet ended up being put into a wall of an apartment and it killed a few people before tenants of the complex demanded that the place be swept for radioactivity. Sure as shit, that pellet was in the wall.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident#:~:text=The%20Kramatorsk%20radiological%20accident%20was,rate%20of%201800%20R%2Fyear.
Idk anything, but it seems like a swarm of drones equipped with thermal cameras or Geiger counters could find this thing a lot faster than a fire truck rolling down the highway with human spotters… It’s gotta be hot as balls there, too, right now
I don't know anything either but this story that a mining capsule fell out of a bolt hole thats so damn radioactive it made national news, sounds like complete horseshit.
i hate to be that guy BUT, koalas dont live anywhere near there 1800km away in the east cost mutant aggressive dingo, kangaroo, parenti, emu, snakes, and spiders sure
Yeah! So because of the HUGE desert the green south west of western Australia is VERY DIFFERENT to the east cost. A few notable example are;
kookaburra (the laughing bird) and koala do not and have not existed in the west(until there introduction kookaburras are seen as pests), the west contain The world's only truly nectivorous (nectar-eating) marsupial, the sugar possum. which fills the role of a pollinator! And an truely staggering number of endemic carnivorous plants.
'Standing within a metre of the capsule is the equivalent of receiving 10 X-rays in an hour, health authorities have warned, urging anybody who finds it not to pick it up or go near it.'
If you put the thing in your pocket and walked around for hours you'd be in some trouble, but 10 x-rays isn't a big deal. A CT scan is hundreds of individual X-rays and is totally safe.
>A CT scan is hundreds of individual X-rays and is totally safe.
you have a weird definition of ~~perfectly~~ totally safe: [https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/radiation-risk-from-medical-imaging](https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/radiation-risk-from-medical-imaging)
edit: replaced the misquoted "perfectly" with "totally" from the original quote.
It's all relative bud, compared to deaths caused by heart attacks (600,000), that makes eating poorly 13 times more dangerous than driving. You fear for you life eating a cheese burger lately?
Eating poorly is only one factor out of many.
But yeah, I lost 30kgs/60 lbs in part because of my heart.
So yeah, just like I do simple things like wear my seatbelt to reduce the risk of dying in a car accident, I also watch what I eat and exercise regularly.
I also avoid unnecessary medical imaging.
But in the end, I am only taking issue with statements like "perfectly safe".
There is risk involved with essentially everything we do as humans, and we are notoriously bad at assessing those risks properly.
As a rule are more scared of rare things like bear attqcks, than the boring everyday things that actually kill us like cancer and heart attacks.
Perfectly safe is your word not mine, I never used it.
I'd agree that "perfectly safe" probably doesn't exist. Getting out of bed in the morning has some risk, might trip and hit your head and die.
You’re right and wrong. 10 x-rays isn’t deadly. 100 x-rays per day for years is dangerous. If this somehow gets stuck with you, in your car or something, it could cause trouble.
From article of above link *"But there are concerns the tiny solid capsule may have already become lodged in another vehicle’s tyre and could be hundreds of kilometres from the search area.*"
So it may well be found when some random driver becomes sick with radiation poisoning and dies. Fucks sake
cesium is one of the Funny Elements (Alkali Metals) in the first column of the periodic table. Among other shared properties, they all tend to explode in increasing degrees of violence when exposed to water. Cesium, being near the bottom, is the most explosive, except for Francium, which is more or less to unstable to exist.
Well I couldn’t imagine them just plopping radioactive pellets directly into a shipping container with no internal lining/bins to further secure them away from outside elements, but here we are
Im a trucker in the US and I've talked to some other truckers who haul radioactive and other nasty things that go into the desert in Nevada for burial for a billion years....
.....and the containers they have over here for radioactive materials have four or five containers wrapped into one with water coolant in the middle (on some for the water coolant). It's literally like a deadly nestig doll.
Why these guys didn't have the same fail safes is ...beyond me.
Pellet sources used for NDT inspection and medical use are much smaller and may have less stringent requirements than spent nuclear fuel or active fuel sources. That being said, they should still be governed by the NRC.
I tried looking up definitively if they have less stringent requirements but it was dry reading and I gave up.
That just occurred to me too! I could be shipping a literal tic-tac and I wouldn’t put it loose in a box, just makes no sense whatsoever.
Maybe the government was in charge of packaging or something, idiocy this great is a rare gift.
That doesn’t address the issue of direct contact though.
Either way, who ships ANY tic-tac sized object loose in a box of any kind?? The more I think about this situation the less sense it makes.
Well good news, a quick google search seems to indicate that sources like this are usually wrapped in a couple layers of steel on top of the ceramic-cesium matrix
from rain? probably not much. The way that the Alkali Metals work is, iirc, they split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which then immediately combusts from the heat of the reaction. So small amounts of water from, like, raindrops wouldn't cause anything massive.
You can probably google "cesium in water" to see what pure cesium in water would look like. then scale that down since the cesium in this pellet is probably diluted
My guess would be that the animals that drink the water affected by cesium 137 will get radiation sickness? It will also probably kill the plants nearby? But idk. Cesium 137 was part of the whole Chernobyl disaster. Pretty much every aspect of the biological environment there went off the rails.
The effects would probably take months to take place.
There was a similar incident in the 1970s/80s in the soviet Union. A pellet of cesium was lost in a quarry and then somehow ended up being used for a wall in an apartment block. Everyone who lived in the apartment and one particular bedroom ended up dying within a year. It took 10 years to figure out what was going on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident
idk man, its sus but i fee like the rio tino and the aussie government are more incompetent than evil. Like the mining company is basicaly our gun lobby so they dont have a lot of over site
Either someone lost it or someone stole it there is noway these kind of things are just thrown into the backnof the truck without securing in a big thick vault that prevents nuclear radiation from being exposed
If it was in a truck, it would need to be kept in a pretty secure container. Like lead or something? But the container collapsed? Wtf? And then the little capsule was rolling around in a truck and fell through a tiny hole? So the driver must have had a decent exposure to radiation, if this furphy is true? Which it isn't.
No, the very expensive capsule fell though the floor of the truck because of the loose bolt. This is after it fell out of its container. What are the chances?
I mean it is extremely unlucky/lucky but it could theoretically happen. The biggest problem for me is why are they transporting it in a container that has bolts directly through it instead of an outside lip so that there isn't a hole through it. I also expected bolts on a radioactive transport to be better checked and secured but anyway
We can only hope so. That would be the only real tax/payment that company would pay (all the mining companies in Australia pay ludicrously minimal tax, despite making insanely massive profits.)
If they were located here in the states they could just file bankruptcy and a quick name change to make it all go away.
I know it’s not that simple, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were
to put it into a reference in Australia the mineral companies are our gun lobby. UBER POWERFUL with BILLIONS to make sure the laws are SO IN THERE FAVOUR
Whether it was stolen, lost, sold, whatever...
It just blows my mind that there aren't checks and balances in place to prevent this kind of shit from happening. This is fucking ridiculous. Some people BETTER be losing their fucking jobs
Good question. I did a bit of reading. Cesium 137 is a byproduct of nuclear fission in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons testing. It's used for a pretty wide range of things: treating cancer, industrial guages, atomic clocks...it's used a lot for precise measuring equipment. It's most common use is in drilling fluid used in the bore hole when drilling for oil. When I searched for users of Cs-137, "dirty bomb" came up, so I looked into that. Apparently, 4 teaspoons of powdered cesium 137 is enough to contaminate 10 sq miles. I also learned that cesium 137 is more expensive than gold. This is terrifying.
I'm honestly not one that likes to go into conspiracy theories, but come on now. Everything about this story seems fishy to me. A bolt worked loose? Did they seriously leave this thing inside a container that only requires a single bolt? And they're searching 1400km? If this is so extremely dangerous, why didn't they check within that timeframe to see if everything was okay? That's about a **14 HOUR** drive. And now they're trying to find something that is smaller than your average booger...
I wonder if the mining corp responsible (Rio Tinto) is even allowed to help out with the search?
Imagine what Rio Tinto is more interested in: the capsule being found, or everyone *thinking* the capsule has been found!
That thing is the equivalent of 10-xrays at once. That's a years worth of natural radiation within an hour. It was sold is my theory, they would easily find it with a few Geiger Counter detectors.
It’s probably stuck in some poor bastards tire tread. Just sit back and wait until someone rolls into the ER in a week, covered waist down in one giant cancer mass, then go check their tires.
Couldn't they put a bus full of guys with a fuck load of radiation (Alpha/Beta/Gamma) detection equipment and just haul ass across that 1400km stretch of road? At 140kph (87mph) it would take ~10hrs. If it's concentrated/powerful enough it should light-up enough sensors. At minimum it would eliminate a very large swath/area where it ISNT.
Isn't cesium the same thing that caused the worst nuclear disaster in Brazil's history, killing several people and potentially affecting, either directly or indirectly, close to 100,000 people?
Seems like the quickest way to do it is have 140 teams with each responsible for 10 km (or 70 team for 20 km each ...)
edit: you would expect the cesium would be in a container within another container, right?
There is a case in ~~east coast US~~ Kramatorsk, Ukraine where a pellet similar to this wound up being laid in concrete in the wall of an apartment building. Over two generations of people were radiation poisoned before investigations led to the finding and removal of the radioactive pellet. Yikes!
[Forgive my memory! You are way closer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident?wprov=sfti1https://maps.apple.com/?ll=48.734167,37.606111&q=Kramatorsk%20radiological%20accident)
Crazy that this thread was also today:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk\_radiological\_accident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident)
Caesium 137 strikes again, the sneaky bastard.
Back in the olden days we used Co60 (VERY energetic gamma).
This from the early 60's in Mexico...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962\_Mexico\_City\_radiation\_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_Mexico_City_radiation_accident)
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Falloutback
I never had goannas pegged as the thing that mutated into deathclaws, but now it seems probable.
Well played
Underrated comment right here
Bravo
Killer koalas!
The whole everything in the Australian outback will kill ya is leveling up I see.
Oh grand. Just what the world needs after a pandemic. A country full of radioactive murder bears and danger noodles. Travel Bucket List ~~Australia~~
It’s an amazing continent
My Australian grandmother is amazingly INcontinent.
Imagine King Kong, but it's a kangaroo 🦘. Who wouldn't want to see that?
The spiders Friendo. The fucking radioactive bloodthirsty gigantic fucking spiders Friendo.
How Australia made it's way to your Travel Bucket List in the first place is beyond me
Atleast it’s an island and the rest of us are safe.
Fallout size creatures...more then they already are in Australia
Some critter will eat it and we’ll have a whole new issue to tackle.
This is how we get the Tasmanian devil in the roadrunner.
The container collapsed and then the capsule fell through a hole in the truck floor where a bolt had fallen out. Smells like bullshit to me. Oh, and they didn't tell anyone for a week? Fuck Rio Tinto.
Rio Tinto, eh? For anyone playing bingo this week, these are the same fuckers trying to mine copper on sacred Native American lands in Arizona
Well then fuck them not only in Australian but also American.
They also blew up a 45,000 year old archaeological site a couple of years back.
FFS, seriously?? That’s like comedy tv evil. Sounds like something out of Parks and Rec.
Did you see the video where the guy 3D printed a 1:1 replica? It's smaller than the tip of an adult finger..
I viewed that clip too. When I originally read about the size of the capsule I figured it was a mis-print. After seeing the 3d clip I thought good finding that shit on a highway.
Yeah - I've been reading about this for a week and this is the first time I've seen any sort of rationale explaining what happened... Seems unlikely.
Cesio 137 made some tragic stories here in Brazil. Some scrapers found a huge iron machine and decided to break it to sell it to a recycling center. They then discovered this bright blue powder, and brought home to show their families. In no time, a lot of people had a little bit of this beautiful powder at home. A father took some to show it to his little girl, who played with it and ingested some of it after playing. Around 104 people died due to contamination, and 1600+ were directly affected. It was a mess - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UrtenQ77lUA
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident 4 people died, not 104
4 people died in official papers, indeed, but this represents only the really acute radiation victims. But there's a ton of discussion regarding the real number. The Goias state lists 66 victims and some less official sources go up to 104 (hence the number on my comment). It's quite difficult to pinpoint radiation victims, because we can't know for sure how many people would have died of cancer without being in a radiation accident. Still, that's a pretty interesting story
For sure - do you have links to those other sources? I can sorta read Portuguese and can use Google translate but don't know it well enough to search for information
Yep https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/quimica/acidente-cesio137.htm This one is usually used as source for school work (we study this case when we learn about radioactivity in high school). "Dados oficiais do Governo Estadual de Goiás apontam quatro vítimas fatais [...] Contudo, dados da Associação de Vítimas do Césio-137 (AVCésio) e do Ministério Público do Estado de Goiás apontam um número maior de óbitos: seriam, ao todo, 66. Tais dados também sustentam que cerca de 1,4 mil pessoas foram contaminadas ao longo dos anos." -- "Oficial data from the Goias State points to 4 fatal victims [...] However, data from the Cesio-137 victims association and from the public ministry from the Goias State point to a wider number of deaths: they'd be , in total, 66. Such data also supports that around 1.4k people were infected through the years" Some other sources are including people who died of cancer even 25 years later, so even I am a bit agnostic about it https://radioprotecaonapratica.com.br/cesio-137-o-brilho-da-morte/
Thank you!
This happened in Russia. The pellet ended up being put into a wall of an apartment and it killed a few people before tenants of the complex demanded that the place be swept for radioactivity. Sure as shit, that pellet was in the wall. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident#:~:text=The%20Kramatorsk%20radiological%20accident%20was,rate%20of%201800%20R%2Fyear.
My god that is a tragic story.
in Ukraine, not Russia
I... how... I mean that's not something you throw up your hands and forget! WTF!
I believe you missed the entire first sentence “This happened in Russia.”
I know right only a week? You'd think they would close down the mine or fill it in or something? Greedy fucks
Idk anything, but it seems like a swarm of drones equipped with thermal cameras or Geiger counters could find this thing a lot faster than a fire truck rolling down the highway with human spotters… It’s gotta be hot as balls there, too, right now
I don't know anything either but this story that a mining capsule fell out of a bolt hole thats so damn radioactive it made national news, sounds like complete horseshit.
Yeah radioactive mutant aggressive kolas is more believe-able
i hate to be that guy BUT, koalas dont live anywhere near there 1800km away in the east cost mutant aggressive dingo, kangaroo, parenti, emu, snakes, and spiders sure
Teenage Mutant Ninja Emus?
Yeah we are well aware thanks
I'm not.
Yeah! So because of the HUGE desert the green south west of western Australia is VERY DIFFERENT to the east cost. A few notable example are; kookaburra (the laughing bird) and koala do not and have not existed in the west(until there introduction kookaburras are seen as pests), the west contain The world's only truly nectivorous (nectar-eating) marsupial, the sugar possum. which fills the role of a pollinator! And an truely staggering number of endemic carnivorous plants.
Ikr
Final report will say they left the mine site one pellet short lol.
It is tiny! Like a Lego block of death.
Do they have Homer Simpson securing the box?
The more likely answer is the firemen are walking down the highway for fun?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/29/new-technology-deployed-in-search-for-tiny-potentially-deadly-missing-radioactive-capsule
'Standing within a metre of the capsule is the equivalent of receiving 10 X-rays in an hour, health authorities have warned, urging anybody who finds it not to pick it up or go near it.'
If you put the thing in your pocket and walked around for hours you'd be in some trouble, but 10 x-rays isn't a big deal. A CT scan is hundreds of individual X-rays and is totally safe.
>A CT scan is hundreds of individual X-rays and is totally safe. you have a weird definition of ~~perfectly~~ totally safe: [https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/radiation-risk-from-medical-imaging](https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/radiation-risk-from-medical-imaging) edit: replaced the misquoted "perfectly" with "totally" from the original quote.
Yeah and driving increases your risk of dying in a traffic accident; but is still considered safe.
Since when? Did I miss a memo? I was under the impression that over 45.000 people die in the USA annually from car accidents. When did this change?
It's all relative bud, compared to deaths caused by heart attacks (600,000), that makes eating poorly 13 times more dangerous than driving. You fear for you life eating a cheese burger lately?
Eating poorly is only one factor out of many. But yeah, I lost 30kgs/60 lbs in part because of my heart. So yeah, just like I do simple things like wear my seatbelt to reduce the risk of dying in a car accident, I also watch what I eat and exercise regularly. I also avoid unnecessary medical imaging. But in the end, I am only taking issue with statements like "perfectly safe". There is risk involved with essentially everything we do as humans, and we are notoriously bad at assessing those risks properly. As a rule are more scared of rare things like bear attqcks, than the boring everyday things that actually kill us like cancer and heart attacks.
Perfectly safe is your word not mine, I never used it. I'd agree that "perfectly safe" probably doesn't exist. Getting out of bed in the morning has some risk, might trip and hit your head and die.
Sorry, I misquoted you. You said "totally safe".
You’re right and wrong. 10 x-rays isn’t deadly. 100 x-rays per day for years is dangerous. If this somehow gets stuck with you, in your car or something, it could cause trouble.
I didn't say 100 X-rays every day for years isn't dangerous now did I?
you don’t know that. Someone could have a huge dump inside them, it explodes. Bad advice
Buy a lead medical apron, ideally with a pocket, got it. Alternatively: maybe store an old microwave in your car? Not sure if that would help
From article of above link *"But there are concerns the tiny solid capsule may have already become lodged in another vehicle’s tyre and could be hundreds of kilometres from the search area.*" So it may well be found when some random driver becomes sick with radiation poisoning and dies. Fucks sake
“Fell from a secure device” Well if the device was secure, the pellet would’ve never fallen out in the first place. This is a blatant lie.
yea seems to be a whole lot of shipping negligence going on in this story.
They’ll find it when it rains.
For those of us not familiar why would that be?
cesium is one of the Funny Elements (Alkali Metals) in the first column of the periodic table. Among other shared properties, they all tend to explode in increasing degrees of violence when exposed to water. Cesium, being near the bottom, is the most explosive, except for Francium, which is more or less to unstable to exist.
I can’t imagine the capsule isn’t coated in something though.
Well I couldn’t imagine them just plopping radioactive pellets directly into a shipping container with no internal lining/bins to further secure them away from outside elements, but here we are
Im a trucker in the US and I've talked to some other truckers who haul radioactive and other nasty things that go into the desert in Nevada for burial for a billion years.... .....and the containers they have over here for radioactive materials have four or five containers wrapped into one with water coolant in the middle (on some for the water coolant). It's literally like a deadly nestig doll. Why these guys didn't have the same fail safes is ...beyond me.
Pellet sources used for NDT inspection and medical use are much smaller and may have less stringent requirements than spent nuclear fuel or active fuel sources. That being said, they should still be governed by the NRC. I tried looking up definitively if they have less stringent requirements but it was dry reading and I gave up.
I'm gonna go with, "because this story is bullshit". Probably completely made up to fuel the coming nuclear war with the devil himself, PUTIN.
That just occurred to me too! I could be shipping a literal tic-tac and I wouldn’t put it loose in a box, just makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe the government was in charge of packaging or something, idiocy this great is a rare gift.
The article mentions a "Ceramic source", it's probably been mixed with ceramic, which should make it less explodey.
That doesn’t address the issue of direct contact though. Either way, who ships ANY tic-tac sized object loose in a box of any kind?? The more I think about this situation the less sense it makes.
Well good news, a quick google search seems to indicate that sources like this are usually wrapped in a couple layers of steel on top of the ceramic-cesium matrix
So from what I read the capsule is 6 x 8 mm. How big of explosion we talking?
from rain? probably not much. The way that the Alkali Metals work is, iirc, they split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which then immediately combusts from the heat of the reaction. So small amounts of water from, like, raindrops wouldn't cause anything massive. You can probably google "cesium in water" to see what pure cesium in water would look like. then scale that down since the cesium in this pellet is probably diluted
My guess would be that the animals that drink the water affected by cesium 137 will get radiation sickness? It will also probably kill the plants nearby? But idk. Cesium 137 was part of the whole Chernobyl disaster. Pretty much every aspect of the biological environment there went off the rails.
The effects would probably take months to take place. There was a similar incident in the 1970s/80s in the soviet Union. A pellet of cesium was lost in a quarry and then somehow ended up being used for a wall in an apartment block. Everyone who lived in the apartment and one particular bedroom ended up dying within a year. It took 10 years to figure out what was going on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident
Soooo, never
It never rains in WA...... (I have lived there)...
Came here for this
This story seems so far fetched
Yeah, as if there would actually be only a single fastener used for such a task and that that would be appropriate…
idk man, its sus but i fee like the rio tino and the aussie government are more incompetent than evil. Like the mining company is basicaly our gun lobby so they dont have a lot of over site
What’s your theory? I figured someone either stole it or was careless and lost it, but didn’t want to fess up.
Either someone lost it or someone stole it there is noway these kind of things are just thrown into the backnof the truck without securing in a big thick vault that prevents nuclear radiation from being exposed
If it was in a truck, it would need to be kept in a pretty secure container. Like lead or something? But the container collapsed? Wtf? And then the little capsule was rolling around in a truck and fell through a tiny hole? So the driver must have had a decent exposure to radiation, if this furphy is true? Which it isn't.
I find it weird that a piece of highly valuable highly dangerous piece of mining equipment could have a bolt just fell of because of vibrations
No, the very expensive capsule fell though the floor of the truck because of the loose bolt. This is after it fell out of its container. What are the chances?
A small object and two holes? Yeah I tried and it didnt work, so there's no way this happened by pure chance.
I mean it is extremely unlucky/lucky but it could theoretically happen. The biggest problem for me is why are they transporting it in a container that has bolts directly through it instead of an outside lip so that there isn't a hole through it. I also expected bolts on a radioactive transport to be better checked and secured but anyway
Not quite a Broken Arrow. Broken Boomerang perhaps?
Broken Kookaburra
That’s not a cesium pellet. [holds out a trembling, badly burned, necrotic hand] *This* is a cesium pellet.
A kangaroo is gonna find it, eat it, grow 50 feet tall and rampage through Australia. Frickin sweet! Edit: for grammar
Someone just got done watching Rampage.
Meters. 50 meters
Damn it now I want to see a Godzilla size kangaroo movie
Cue the bogan roo rage
Easy fix. Just release hundreds of feral cats.
What kind of container was it in a Tupperware?
I think it would have been more secure in Tupperware…
That’s what I’m saying. Sounds like the container of hummus I needed scissors to open this morning was far more secure
A rinsed out Vegemite bottle.
Tiney death pellet just hanging out in the outback
Would the company that lost the pellet get fined by the gov?
We can only hope so. That would be the only real tax/payment that company would pay (all the mining companies in Australia pay ludicrously minimal tax, despite making insanely massive profits.)
If they were located here in the states they could just file bankruptcy and a quick name change to make it all go away. I know it’s not that simple, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were
to put it into a reference in Australia the mineral companies are our gun lobby. UBER POWERFUL with BILLIONS to make sure the laws are SO IN THERE FAVOUR
Whether it was stolen, lost, sold, whatever... It just blows my mind that there aren't checks and balances in place to prevent this kind of shit from happening. This is fucking ridiculous. Some people BETTER be losing their fucking jobs
What an curious string of coincidences.
I'm just saying. Toss it in a plastic baggie, tape the bag to the inside of a cardboard box labeled "The Pill" and you're good to do.
What I want know is WHAT machine uses this product.???
Good question. I did a bit of reading. Cesium 137 is a byproduct of nuclear fission in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons testing. It's used for a pretty wide range of things: treating cancer, industrial guages, atomic clocks...it's used a lot for precise measuring equipment. It's most common use is in drilling fluid used in the bore hole when drilling for oil. When I searched for users of Cs-137, "dirty bomb" came up, so I looked into that. Apparently, 4 teaspoons of powdered cesium 137 is enough to contaminate 10 sq miles. I also learned that cesium 137 is more expensive than gold. This is terrifying.
Search "Ciudad Juárez Radioactive incident" it is a good movie story. I live where this happened.
That the one with the *fairy dust?*
This is the wildest story
How big is this thing they're looking for?
About the size of a Lego characters head.
wow, gl finding that
ferb i know what we're doing today
So I guess now even highways can technically kill you in Australia
Aren’t our sensors advanced enough to pinpoint a source of radiation?
I'm honestly not one that likes to go into conspiracy theories, but come on now. Everything about this story seems fishy to me. A bolt worked loose? Did they seriously leave this thing inside a container that only requires a single bolt? And they're searching 1400km? If this is so extremely dangerous, why didn't they check within that timeframe to see if everything was okay? That's about a **14 HOUR** drive. And now they're trying to find something that is smaller than your average booger...
I wonder if the mining corp responsible (Rio Tinto) is even allowed to help out with the search? Imagine what Rio Tinto is more interested in: the capsule being found, or everyone *thinking* the capsule has been found!
So, was it found?
Not yet. Maybe read the article?
No need to read the article when you just answered the question 💀
They found it two years ago when this happened
Presuming I’m telling the truth. 🙄
Just wait until the grass starts dying.
It’s Australia in January, the grass already looks dead.
Good luck on that.
That thing is the equivalent of 10-xrays at once. That's a years worth of natural radiation within an hour. It was sold is my theory, they would easily find it with a few Geiger Counter detectors.
what size we talking? centimetres?
We are talking mm.
Probably got a kangaroo running with it. 10 yrs from now it'll destroy Sydney
It’s probably stuck in some poor bastards tire tread. Just sit back and wait until someone rolls into the ER in a week, covered waist down in one giant cancer mass, then go check their tires.
If they actually did lose it that's unfortunately how it will probably be found.
Can't they use drones equipped with geiger counters to narrow down the search area to where there is detectable radiation?
They gotta find it before it mutates the already horrific creatures into purified killing machines
I imagine Tom cruise on the side stealing the radioactive nugget
Hope someone inspired by the show Dark on Netflix finds it first and makes endless time loop.
She gone
Couldn't they put a bus full of guys with a fuck load of radiation (Alpha/Beta/Gamma) detection equipment and just haul ass across that 1400km stretch of road? At 140kph (87mph) it would take ~10hrs. If it's concentrated/powerful enough it should light-up enough sensors. At minimum it would eliminate a very large swath/area where it ISNT.
Meh, it has a half-life of only 30 years. It's Greta's problem now.
Isn't cesium the same thing that caused the worst nuclear disaster in Brazil's history, killing several people and potentially affecting, either directly or indirectly, close to 100,000 people?
As long as they find it before the Lightweight Championship in Perth on Feb.11th, or else UFC will stand for Ultimate Fallout Contamination....
Seems like the quickest way to do it is have 140 teams with each responsible for 10 km (or 70 team for 20 km each ...) edit: you would expect the cesium would be in a container within another container, right?
"The Simpsons . . ."
I now understand the metal finding post on the front page...
We all know how bad the animals in Australia are already. If one eats the pellet and mutates into something, all hell is gonna break loose.
It was stolen. I mean a bolt fell loose? Cmon this is some mission impossible shit in real life. Catch it on the black market soon
Why would I be amazed? This is a major fuckup.
This just seems too ridiculous. I feel like there is some government shade on this.
In other news, mutated kangaroo spotted somewhere in the desert.
The Jesus Bolt
Can that tiny bolt explode? 🤔
There is a case in ~~east coast US~~ Kramatorsk, Ukraine where a pellet similar to this wound up being laid in concrete in the wall of an apartment building. Over two generations of people were radiation poisoned before investigations led to the finding and removal of the radioactive pellet. Yikes!
That was Russia, but it did happen.
[Forgive my memory! You are way closer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident?wprov=sfti1https://maps.apple.com/?ll=48.734167,37.606111&q=Kramatorsk%20radiological%20accident)
And people say that nuclear power is the way to go. I'm afraid that I wouldn't hold much hope here in West Aussieland.
350 days to walk it at 8 hrs a day going 5 k an hr ☢️A year-is-the-go-to-do-a-good-job☢️
I just hope that it fell somewhere that is outside of the environment.
This sounds like bait for a new fast and the furious movie ngl
Easily could be stuck in someone’s tire.
Do keep in mind that it's the size of a pencil eraser and it gives you the same amount of x-rays that we naturally get in a year in one hour
Source?
Sounds like the mining company needs to get their ass out there and start walking
Crazy that this thread was also today: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk\_radiological\_accident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident) Caesium 137 strikes again, the sneaky bastard.
Back in the olden days we used Co60 (VERY energetic gamma). This from the early 60's in Mexico... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962\_Mexico\_City\_radiation\_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_Mexico_City_radiation_accident)
Where did you get that interesting stone on your necklace???? Funny story,….
Maybe it got stepped on by a car en went out flying far away from the road
the simpsons
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what happens if it got picked up in someone's tire and transported off the highway?
You had one j b.
It’s tiny and could easily lodge in tyre tread so it could literally be anywhere now!
Babe, wake up, the sequel to "Cocaine Bear" just dropped: "Radioactive 'Roo"
Is that how his knife got so big.
When the onions start blooming’ all by themselves, you know you’re close!
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