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Thieves Who Stole Cobalt-60 Will Soon Be Dead
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Washington Post reports that the carjackers who set off international alarm bells by absconding with a truckload of highly radioactive cobalt-60, used in hospital radiotherapy machines, most likely had no idea what they were stealing and will die soon from exposure. The robbery occurred as the cobalt-60 was being driven from a public hospital in the border town of Tijuana to a storage facility in central Mexico. While waiting for daybreak at a gas station in the state of Hidalgo the drivers were jumped by two gunmen who beat them and stole the truck. "I believe, definitely, that the thieves did not know what they had; they were interested in the crane, in the vehicle," says Mardonio Jimenez, a physicist with Mexico's nuclear safety commission. The prospect that material that could be used in a radioactive dirty bomb had gone missing sparked an urgent two-day hunt that concluded when the material, cobalt-60, used in hospital radiotherapy machines, was found along with the stolen Volkswagen truck. The cobalt-60 was found, removed from its casing, in a rural area near the town of Hueypoxtla about 25 miles from where the truck was stolen. Jimenez suspects that curiosity got the better of the thieves and they opened the box. So far the carjackers have not been arrested, but authorities expect they will not live long. "The people who handled it will have severe problems with radiation. They will, without a doubt, die.""
Geiger-Mueller detectors work on the photoelectric effect. Point source radiation is an inverse square law. You wouldn't detect this stuff even a few miles away. Reactors hardly release any isotopes. It's the thermals that show up on satellites
Here you go: The Goiânia accident.
It wasn't an X-ray machine though, but a device for radiotherapy.
Fortunately, X-ray machines are harmless when powered down.
ISO 21482 is pretty universal. Doesn't solve any of the nastier issues of cross-cultural-communication-without-shared-assumptions; but either that symbol, the old trefoil, or both, are about as iconic as warning labels get.
Now, as for this 'cobalt 60 in those drug shipments' concept, it might expose the mules (who tend to be low level and treated as expendable anyway) to enough radiation to kill them, slowly; but the major effect would be on the customers: ie. the coke-snorting Americans whining about them. You wouldn't be the first to suggest this... particular approach, the winning the war on drugs; but I bet you'd learn some interesting things about who does drugs once the casualties start to pile up.
They probably don't. They felt nausea after first handling it, then after that passed they felt fine. They will continue to feel fine for maybe one to three days during what is called the "walking ghost" phase, after which their bodies will start shutting down and they die a very messy and painful death.
They could have been intending to use it to make dirty bomb what could have exposed hundreds, if not thousands to such an ugly death.
The dirty bomb, as a weapon of mass destruction, is a myth. Disperse the radioactive material far enough to affect a large number of people, and you disperse the radiation as well. The concentration of radioactive material decreases as the square of the radius of the area of dispersal.
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And yet, this seems to be the very premise of America these days.
I nominate these guys for the Darwin award!
These guys are amateurs compared to the Mexican scrappers who sold hospital equipment containing 6,000 pellets of cobalt-60 for scrap. The machinery was then processed into rebar which was in turn was used in god knows how many homes in Mexico and the USA as well as metal furniture that ended ups as far away as Canada. The Mexicans even found pellets of cobalt-60 embedded into the asphalt surface of roads in Sinaloa and 109 houses had to be torn down and disposed of as radioactive waste. All in all some 5000 metric tons of steel were contaminated ... as far as is known. According to a documentary I watched about this incident there is a good possibility that there are still contaminated houses and furniture out there. The incident only came to light when a truck with a load of contaminated rebar drove past a Los Alamos laboratories radiation checkpoint and set of a whole bunch of alarms. One person died of bone cancer, another 4 were injured and least 10 individuals received significant exposures and some scrapyard workers became sterile. There is also a good chance that many more people either will, or already have, developed cancer since it took about a year to discover this snafu and even longer to track down all the contaminated material already in use. This story made me think about how US Homeland security worries about 'dirty bombs'. The only thing that still amazes me about that particular contingency is that it hasn't happened yet because highly radioactive material is apparently very easy to come by. The Juarez incident caused radiation sensors to be installed at all major border crossings but one wonders if this has been extended to every single crossing along the US/Mexican border. Either way, I'd be worried.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
In this particular case, and especially given the amount of crime in Mexico, it does not surprise me that the truck would be unmarked. And it doesn't really matter if the cargo is marked: carjackers aren't going to rob you at gunpoint and beat you up then take the time to look at the cargo and see if it is worth stealing. They are just going to drive off. I am surprised that the hospital didn't at least hire a security service to escort the shipment; I would assume even(maybe even especially) in Mexico contractable security services are common. Maybe they just aren't trustworthy or capabale enough?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Goiana was Cesium-137.
There have been several incidents with Cobalt-60 sources, including one in 2010 in Dehli, India, and another in 2000, in Thailand. And in some cases, the radioactive material has ended up being recycled into new products; for example - incidents which actually happened: water-dishes for pets, and belt-buckles sold from discount websites. In these cases, the radioactivity was detected by random spot-checks. There are probably products out there that have incorporated recycled radioactive substances, which made it through spot-checks and are sitting in people's homes, making them sick - and there is no way for us to know.
With regard to the cobalt 60 source: Wikipedia says it was 111 Tbq.
"Example: a 60Co source with an activity of 2.8 GBq, which is equivalent to 60 g of pure 60Co, generates a dose of 1 mSv at one meter distance within one hour."
A 1 Sv dose in 1 hour, is lethal.
Extrapolating 111 TBq to 2.8 GBq; (111,000/2.8 = 39,642 ...); so multiply 1 mSv by that, and you get 39.6 Sv per hour.
If they took it out of it's casing, they'd receive a lethal dose of radiation in less than 2 minutes. (depending on how close they stayed, and how long they stayed near it). Staying at least 400 cm away, would mitigate much of the beta particles, but not the gamma rays. Gamma rays are attenuated by the inverse square law, like any radiant energy. So distance is also your friend, but better still, an inch or so of lead.
They would not start feeling symptoms, until an hour or two later. Dizzyness, headache, nausea, vomiting. Later - worse symptoms appear. It will probably take a few days for them to die, and they may seek medical treatment, which may save them, depending on how long they were in close proximity to the unshielded source.
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