Lethal radioactive machine stolen in China

[Dover]

Lethal radioactive machine stolen in China


Tuesday 01 June 2004, 9:14 Makka Time, 6:14 GMT


Authorities in China are concerned about the theft of a piece of potentially deadly radioactive equipment.

Hundreds of police in Shanghai have been searching for a small cylinder containing a gamma-ray apparatus capable of transmitting fatal doses of radiation, Chinese state press reported on Tuesday.

The 10 kilogram box containing the instrument used to perform industrial radiography on construction sites disappeared early on Saturday after a company driver parked a car carrying the cylinder outside his flat, the Shanghai Daily said.

When he returned, the canister clearly marked with a radioactive sign, was missing.

Press reports said a two day-search in the city's northern Jingshan district had yet to yield results....>>

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/21378DC6-24AE-42DC-B96D-86CAB990D99B.htm

[LastDemocratInSC]

1. Probably cobalt-60 ... very nasty stuff ...

Talk about the makings of a dirty bomb.

It's probably a cannister of cobalt-60. They use it to x-ray the welds between steel beams, either in the fabrication area or up on the building. They put a sheet of x-ray film, in a carrier, one one side of the beam and put the cobalt cannister on the other side. Then, they open the shutter on the cobalt cannister for an instant.

In my younger years I worked on radiation therapy equipment used for cancer treatment - linear accelerators and cobalt devices. Our cobalt therapy device had just a few grams of cobalt but it was contained within hundred of pounds of steel - and the container was warm to the touch all of the time - and lasted for years and years and years.

If the cobalt cannister in the story weighed only about 10 Kg then it wasn't much cobalt ... just fractions of a gram, probably, but it is still every bit as deadly.

I remember when I was in the field a story about how a cobalt therapy device was discarded in a dump near a town in Mexico. After the steel had been scavenged all that was left was a little container of powdered metal which townspeople played with, of course, much to their disadvantage.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

2. interesting....