Just hours into their first shift, about 74 kilometres south of the Pilbara mining town of Newman, a team of specialist scientists searching for a minuscule target heard a beep.
As the 40-degree heat belted down on Western Australia’s Pilbara at 11am on Wednesday, a strange two-car convoy slowly travelling south on one of the state’s longest roads came to an abrupt halt.
“Everything spiked and the computers went mad and they hit the brakes and flew out of the vehicle in excitement,” the head of the search efforts Darryl Ray said.WA authorities believe the 8 millimetre-long and 6 millimetre-wide silver capsule fell out of a bolthole in a radiation mining gauge, then out of a wooden crate, and finally off the back of a truck around January 12.
All three agencies quickly tested and packed their specialised radiation detection equipment and from Monday teams began assembling and scouring stretches of the Great Northern Highway, as well as some Perth roads where it was thought the capsule could be. On Saturday, the Sydney-based scientists had determined the CORIS360 was up for the job with a few modifications and could even pinpoint caesium-137 over other radiation common in the WA outback from sources such as uranium.
Despite this good news, his small team had to keep it a secret for four hours as work began to recover the capsule. He said the capsule appeared to have been run over during its few weeks of freedom, but the sturdy ceramic casing was not damaged. Neither Ray nor the scientists involved in the search were surprised that the capsule was found so easily.Loading
Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson, who is also chair of the WA Radiological Council, is leading an investigation into the incident which he said would take weeks to finalise.
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