The radioactive capsule that went missing in Western Australia on January 25 has finally been found. The BBC he says:
On January 25, mining company Rio Tinto reported that one of the radioactive Caesium-137 capsules had gone missing. So the West Australian authorities faced a seemingly impossible task.
They had to locate a pea-sized capsule along a 1.400-kilometer track that stretched from the Gudai-Darri mine in the north of the state to acase just north of Perth city centre.
The authorities swung into action, mobilizing specialist search teams to search for the capsule. Before notifying the public of the threat, on January 26, authorities launched searches in Perth and around the Newman mine site.
An emergency public warning was issued on January 27 citing the danger posed by the radioactive capsule. The health authorities sent a simple message:
Stay away. "It emits both beta and gamma rays, so if you have it around you could either end up with skin damage."
By January 27, search teams were searching for the tiny capsule with portable radiation counters. The meters used in the research are designed to detect radioactivity within a radius of 20 meters. Police focused their efforts on the GPS route taken by the truck and on locations near Perth's metropolitan and high-density areas. A location along the Great Northern Highway was prioritized by police on January 28 after unusual activity was recorded by a Geiger counter – a device used to measure radioactivity. But the investigation did not reveal the capsule.
The following day, additional funding was requested from the Australian federal government for new equipment.
Eventually the authorities revealed that the capsule was found two meters away on the side of the carmobileroad on Wednesday.
"It's a pretty lonely stretch of road from Newman to Perth," Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Darren Klemm told a news conference on Wednesday.
Although he did not give the exact location where the radioactive capsule was found, Mr Klemm said it was found "in the best possible place".
Local media say it was found about 74km from Newman – so about 200km from the mine site. No one appeared to be harmed by the capsule, authorities said, and it did not appear to have moved from where it fell. Mr Klemm said the additional resources from the federal government proved instrumental in finding the capsule.
