Western Australia radioactive capsule

Rio Tinto Group has lost a “highly radioactive” capsule somewhere along a 1400-kilometer (870-mile) highway through the Western Australian desert.

The capsule, which contains cesium-137, a material used in gauges for mining, went missing somewhere along a more than 800-mile stretch of mostly rural ...

It’s possible the capsule has been missing for a couple of weeks. It contains cesium-137, a radioactive material used in gauges for mining, one of the main industries in resource-rich Western Australia. Darryl Ray, acting head of the emergency department, said in a statement Sunday that officials had received specialized equipment to search for the capsule.

The capsule will pound anyone located within a meter of it for an hour with the equivalent of 10 X-rays.

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In this case the needle is a lost radioactive capsule the size of a 10-cent coin and the haystack is a stag...

These gauges are designed to be robust," he said. "It is unusual. It's the modern equivalent of a needle in a haystack.

The company has launched an internal investigation into how it was lost over a 1400-kilometre stretch of road, as authorities launch their own probe and ...

“The impact from radiation will be worse the closer you are, and the longer you are exposed to a concentrated source. “Today, any mobile phone can be turned into a radiation detector by installing an app and covering the camera lens, hence enabling any potential citizen scientists to help in the search for this lost radioactive material. Subscribe to WAtoday](https://subscribe.watoday.com.au/) for $1 a week for the first six months, for uninterrupted access to news, culture and sport from our Perth team, plus sister publications The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and exclusive emails from our newsroom. A loss of radioactive material like this is exceptionally rare but has occurred in part due to the very small size of the capsule. The truck arrived at a Perth depot in Malaga on January 16. People have been warned it could have unknowingly become lodged in their car’s tyres.