Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Cobalt-60, and Lessons From a Mexican Theft

Posted by Soulskill on from the now-everybody-knows-where-to-get-some-cheap-cobalt-60 dept.

Lasrick writes "George Moore and Miles Pomper examine the theft of a truck containing Cobalt-60 and find that, while Mexico did the right thing and reported the theft promptly, they were under no obligation to do so according to international rules and the IAEA. This was true even though the stolen material was 3,000 curies, making it a Category 1 source (the most dangerous). Quoting: 'At a distance of 30.5 centimeters (1 foot) from an unshielded source with an activity level of 3,000 curies, the dose to a bystander would be about 37,000 Rem per hour (a measure of radiation exposure). This means that anyone within a foot of the source when it was out of its shield was being exposed to about 10 Rem per second, a level that would typically kill half of a population exposed to it for 30 seconds. ... The number of fatalities will not be nearly as high as it would have been if the source capsule had been left in a public place. Cobalt 60, like other high-risk radiological sources, is more lethal when it is kept intact as a high-strength source than it would be if spread using a radiological dispersal device such as a so-called “dirty bomb.” Nonetheless, had the Mexican source been used in a dispersal device, the economic consequences could have been extremely significant.'"

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. 61 by puddingebola · · Score: 5, Funny

    '61 was a much better year for Cobalt. Cobalt-60 far overrated, and people are paying too much for it on the open market.

    1. Re:61 by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Funny

      people are paying too much for it on the open market

      Typical knee-jerk Cobalt60-skepticism here on Slashdot. Everyone wants to compare it to tulip mania and yell "bubble", and won't believe that the recent price run-up is because people are genuinely finding it useful as a non-state-controlled currency. USD's days are numbered; in the future, coins glow blue.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  2. Re:So In Effect... by ElementOfDestruction · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You think they have a lot of seat cushions in Mexican bus terminals?

    Give me a break. Terrorists wouldn't waste their time - they'd use it as a dirty bomb for the media attention, they wouldn't be a pest and try to kill 1 person a day randomly over the next 12 years. Where's the attention in that?

  3. Re:So In Effect... by fluffy99 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Correct. First known instance of a criticality accident happened at Los Alamos in 1945. Exposure was 510 rem plus additional exposure immediately after. He was pretty sick within hours, but it took him 25 days to die. A similar accident with the same material a year later killed the scientist in 9-days.