AUSTRALIA AUTHORITIES LOCATE LOST RADIOACTIVE CAPSULE

After a tiny, dangerously radioactive capsule was lost in the Western Australian desert in mid-January, authorities feared that it could take weeks or even months to find it. The device was smaller than a penny, while the search zone was an 870mile stretch of highway cutting across vast tracts of desert.

But the search took just six days, with authorities announcing Wednesday afternoon that the capsule had been recovered in what they called an “extraordinary result.”

“The search crews have literally found the needle in the haystack,” said Stephen Dawson, the emergency services minister for Western Australia.

Authorities had launched the large-scale search, involving the defense force, emergency services and radiation experts, after the capsule was discovered to be missing last week.

A small silver cylinder measuring 0.3 inch by 0.2 inch, the device contains a small amount of cesium-137 that makes it dangerously radioactive, officials said. An hour of exposure to it from a meter away is the equivalent of receiving 10 Xrays, and prolonged exposure can burn the skin, and, in severe cases, cause acute radiation sickness, they said.

The capsule, which is part of a sensor used in mining, was lost sometime between Jan. 12 and Jan. 16 while being transported from a Rio Tinto mine site near Newman, in the remote north of Western Australia, to the state’s capital, Perth. But the box that it was transported in was not opened for another 11 days, at which point the sensor was found in pieces and the capsule was missing, authorities said.

They believe that vibrations from the truck ride caused the sensor to shake apart and also dislodged a mounting bolt, leaving a hole in the bottom of the box. The capsule is believed to have fallen out of the sensor, through the bolt-hole, onto the surface of the truck and bounced onto the road.

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

A search team was then deployed and soon found the capsule, about 6.5 feet from the side of the road, he said.

The capsule was found in a remote location with no nearby communities, and nobody appears to have been injured by it, said Dr. Andrew Robertson, the state’s chief health officer.