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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.""
There's a difference between wanting them killed and finding them dead as a result of their crime a convenient outcome.
Every time a would-be-criminal ends up killing themselves because of their own stupidity, I smile.
My mother was a drunkard and crazy. I was 12 and had to feed her and my two brothers.
Yeah, I stole. Robbed bread trucks, soda trucks, I would go into busy pizza places and just grab a pie off the counter and walk out.
It was always a last resort, it was always about basic survival.
And if I had to do it again, I would.
You clearly had other avenues to get food and shelter.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
> better still, an inch or so of lead.
depends. An old friend worked with medical radio-iodine, which emits high energy gammas. Part of her job was introducing new medical staff to the procedures. She would bring in the standard lead drapes and a Geiger counter and ask them all if they understood radiation precautions. They would of course say yes; she was just a little old lady (her own description), after all, and they were Doctors and Nurses.
She'd hold up the Geiger counter near the patient who had taken the radio-iodine dose, and the Geiger counter would click away steadily.
Then she'd put the lead drape in between patient and Geiger counter -- and the counter would roar.
Then she'd smile and say:
"... I know you all understand secondary radiation, and how gamma rays mostly go straight through tissue like you and me without interacting, but if they hit a really dense material like these lead drapes, they knock off a huge number of electrons that become charged particles that will interact far more readily with tissue, that's one of the reasons we call it ionizing radiation.
"So who wants a drape?"