Rio Tinto Says Sorry for Dropping a Radioactive Capsule in the Australian Outback
Photo: Carla Gottgens (Getty Images)
Mining industry giant Rio Tinto issued an apology on Monday for having dropped a radioactive capsule in the Australian outback. The mining giant said in a statement that it’s taking the accident very seriously, although the miner was quick to point out it was not, in fact, the company’s fault.
There is a lot of speculation, but still no definitive explanation of how a major mining company lost track of a radioactive capsule somewhere along a 1,400 kilometer route (870 miles) for up to two weeks. The small capsule is “part of a gauge used to measure the density of iron ore,” as Reuters explains.
Screenshot: Department of Fire and Emergency Services
Rio Tinto stressed that, really, it’s the contractor’s fault — whom Rio Tinto hired in the first place. In any case, Rio is doing its best to find out what happened so the mining company and its contractors avoid dropping radioactive substances in the future. Better safe than sorry. Well, both safe and sorry, according to the quote from Reuters:
“We are taking this incident very seriously. We recognise this is clearly very concerning and are sorry for the alarm it has caused in the Western Australian community,” Simon Trott, Rio’s iron ore division chief, said in a statement.
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The statement goes on, as the BBC cites, with Rio Tinto adding that:
As part of this investigation we are working closely with the contractor to better understand what went wrong in this instance.
Rio Tinto engaged a third-party contractor, with appropriate expertise and certification, to safely package the device in preparation for transport off-site ahead of receipt at their facility in Perth.
Prior to the device leaving the site, a Geiger counter [a device to detect radioactivity] was used to confirm the presence of the capsule inside the package,”
Australian authorities suspect the capsule fell from its packaging due to bumpy roads sometime between January 10-16: they believe vibrations transmitted through the truck may have unfastened some screws and bolts of the gauge, letting the capsule fall out of its packaging, and out of a gap in the truck.
The truck was traveling from Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri mine in the Kimberley region to a storage facility in the northeast suburbs of Perth. Exactly where the radioactive capsule fell is anybody’s guess, so emergency officials are scouring the entire 870-mile route the truck followed.
Screenshot: Department of Fire and Emergency Services
For reference, that’s almost the distance spanning Texas from the southmost city of Brownsville to Dalhart up near the panhandle; It’s an impossibly large swath of ground to search for a capsule smaller than an Australian ten-cent coin.
But despite its size, the capsule is nonetheless extremely dangerous. It contains Caesium-137, and short-term exposure can cause skin damage, burns, and radiation sickness; long-term exposure can cause cancer. Authorities worry that a member of the public may find it and keep it as a souvenir, per the BBC.
The Department of Fire and Emergency Services is also worried the capsule could’ve lodged in the tire treads of a vehicle passing by — as rocks and pebbles are wont to do. If that’s the case, the radioactive capsule could be in an entirely different location by now. At the very least, Rio Tinto says it’s sorry.
Photo: Carla Gottgens (Getty Images)
