I am a bit surprised they haven't found it a >1mCi Cs137 source should be quite easy to find, it can be detected with a medium sized detector from >10m distance. A car driving along the road with a bunch of detectors in the trunk or a helicopter with a stack of NaI bars mounted on the bottom should see the radiation emitted by the source.
I am working at a National Lab in the US and this is the main focus of my research. Please have a look at our website if you are interested in learning more about this type of things [1].
[1]: https://anp.lbl.gov/
> It is believed the capsule fell through the gap left by a bolt hole, after the bolt was dislodged when a container collapsed as a result of vibrations during the trip.
I'd love to see the post-mortem on this one. That at first glance reads like several failures.
As usual, the press omits the technical specification of the radiation source, leaving one trying to deduce it from the roundabout descriptions in the article. Would it kill them to put something like "a 37 MBq Cs-137 source" somewhere? Granted, the WA Health press release is not too informative either, but at least it identifies the material.
(The X8 capsule from [1] is a dead ringer for the one described.)
[1] https://www.qsa-global.com/industrial-cs-137-gamma-sources
I seem to recall, back when "dirty bombs" were a favorite topic in the news, that the USA was said to have had airborne radiation detectors that could spot quite tiny sources in cars on the highway. Perhaps I'm mistaken but i think they mentioned tracking banana shipments as an example of the sensitivity.
Perhaps this would be a place to use that equipment?
> cannot be weaponised
It's smaller than a coin and could be sewn into someone's favorite shirt. I'd call that a weapon!
When I was living in Neuquén, Patagonia Argentina, we had the same situation.
The city was closed almost a day because a truck driver lost the capsule while driving his truck.
The mayor concern was someone trowing that to the river.
That was 25 years ago I think.
Edit: I'm reading that 6 years ago the same happened..
That's like literally searching for a rice corn in a giant haystack. The only way I can see that search to remotely have a chance is an equally giant swarm of drones with radiation detectors.
What is that device normally used for?
Don’t they have satellites that pick up these readings? I’m always interested how top-secret technologies could filter into local law-enforcement or civil safety efforts, but are prevented from doing so because of the security classification. Like how many times, do you think a murder or something pertinent to solving that has been captured on some sort of satellite or surveillance feed, but it’s never released to that local jurisdictional investigation because The technologies involved are classified or some such.
An urgent warning to stay meters away from a button-battery sized object somewhere along a 1,400 km road? Seems kind of pointless.
> DFES Country North chief superintendent David Gill said there would be "challenges" in locating such a small object.
Wouldn't the radioactivity make finding such a small object far, far easier? It looks like the road is two lanes with a dirt shoulder. Couldn't they get a truck, mount several geiger counters on a pole long enough to sweep the road and shoulder, and drive the road looking for a spike in radiation?