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Missing radiation source recovered
Radioactive material that went missing in Iraq has been found dumped near a petrol station in the southern town of Zubair, officials said on Sunday, ending speculation it could be acquired by Islamic State and used as a weapon.
The officials told Reuters the material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, was undamaged and there were no concerns about radiation.
Reuters reported last week that Iraq had been searching for the material since it was stolen in November from a storage facility belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford near the southern city of Basra.
It was not immediately clear how the device, owned by Swiss inspections group SGS, ended up in Zubair, around 15 km (9 miles) southwest of Basra.
"A passer-by found the radioactive device dumped in Zubair and immediately informed security forces which went with a special radiation prevention team and retrieved the device," the chief of the security panel within Basra provincial council, Jabbar al-Saidi, told Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-radioactive-idUSKCN0VU0JY?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews [reuters.com]
Reminds me of a not-very-recent story in Mexico,
HUEYPOXTLA, Mexico — Mexico’s energy authorities say specialists finally have recovered a capsule of cobalt-60 from a cornfield near the Mexican capital, presumably ending a nine-day saga that began when thieves hijacked a truck carrying the highly radioactive metal.
“The source has been recovered and stored ... in a safe place,” the Energy Department said in a statement late Tuesday night.
The cobalt-60 theft, in the early hours of Dec. 2, sent alarmed officials scrambling from Mexico City to Washington to Vienna.
Some warned that the dangerous material can be used by a terrorist to make so-called dirty bombs that spread radiation by detonating conventional explosives. Others quickly announced the theft was a common robbery, not terrorism.
Still others advised that anyone touching or in proximity to exposed “highly radioactive” material risked quick and nearly certain death. If sold for scrap, as some feared, the material could end up affecting thousands should it end up in steel used in building materials or furniture.
The alarms were squelched for many last Thursday when officials discovered the cobalt in a field on the edge of Hueypoxtla, a farm town of 4,000 people on the high plains 40 miles northeast of Mexico City.
