Missing tiny deadly radioactive capsule in Australia

[Cmaier]

This sounds like the beginning of an action movie.

Australians Scour Desert for Dangerous Radioactive Capsule Smaller Than a Penny

The device, part of a sensor used in mining, is believed to have fallen off the back of a truck while in transit.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Colstan]

Always take your vitamins. People used to think that radioactive elements had a positive health benefit. Then the Radium Girls happened.

This also reminded me of the broken arrow off of the Georgia coast.

There's a Lost Nuclear Bomb Just Off the Georgia Coast. Should You Be Worried?

Thinking of swimming off the Savannah coast? Here's what may be there in the water with you. But should you actually be worried?

www.historynet.com

The Air Force can't even get its record straight. It would make all of the unexploded ordinance from the World Wars look like firecrackers. It's very unlikely to cause a detonation, being underwater and corroded for so long, but the chance isn't zero.

 

[Herdfan]

This also reminded me of the broken arrow off of the Georgia coast.

And this reminds me of the line from the movie Broken Arrow (The one with John Travolta & Christian Slater, not the western) where one of the characters isn't sure which is worse:

Losing a nuclear weapon or that it happens often enough there is a term for it.

 

[theorist9]

They've surely driven the length of the road with a detector, and still haven't found it. A key question, not addressed in the article, is this: Given current detector capabilities, how close does the capsule need to be to the road to be found using a dector that is driven on the road?

From the info. they've given, we could calculate intensity vs. distance.

 

[theorist9]

Always take your vitamins. People used to think that radioactive elements had a positive health benefit. Then the Radium Girls happened.

This also reminded me of the broken arrow off of the Georgia coast.

There's a Lost Nuclear Bomb Just Off the Georgia Coast. Should You Be Worried?

Thinking of swimming off the Savannah coast? Here's what may be there in the water with you. But should you actually be worried?

www.historynet.com

The Air Force can't even get its record straight. It would make all of the unexploded ordinance from the World Wars look like firecrackers. It's very unlikely to cause a detonation, being underwater and corroded for so long, but the chance isn't zero.

There's also a 3–4 megaton Mark 39 warhead buried so deep in North Carolia mud that they weren't able to retrieve the thermonuclear stage, so they just left it there after removing the fissile pit needed to detonate the bomb.
It's a fascinating read--there's some controversy about how close the bomb was to detonating prior to the recovery efforts.

1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[theorist9]

Found it! The article doesn't say this explicitly, but I gather the reason it was found so quickly is that it was close enough to the road (2 m) that its radiation could be picked up by a vehicle driving on it, thus obviating the need for an extensive foot search:

"The capsule was discovered on Wednesday morning, after a vehicle equipped with radiation detection equipment picked up a signal not far from the location of the start of the truck’s journey..."

But I really wish they gave us more detail on just how it was found. They left out the most interesting part, which is the problem with most science reporting.

Seeking a Needle in a Haystack, Australians Find Lost Radioactive Device in Six Days

The authorities had feared it would take weeks to scour hundreds of miles of an Australian desert for the pea-sized device.

www.nytimes.com