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| This image released Wednesday Dec. 4, 2013 by the National Commission on Nuclear Safety and Safeguards of Mexico's Energy Secretary (CNSNS) shows a piece of machinery that is part of the cargo of a stolen truck hauling medical equipment with extremely dangerous radioactive material, in Tepojaco, Hidalgo state, north of Mexico City. The cargo truck was stolen from a gas station in central Mexico, and authorities have put out an alert in six central states and the capital to find it, Mexican and U.N. nuclear officials said Wednesday. |
MEXICO CITY
(AP) -- A missing shipment of radioactive cobalt-60 was found Wednesday
near where the stolen truck transporting the material was abandoned in
central Mexico, the country's nuclear safety director said.
The
highly radioactive material had been removed from its container,
officials said, and one predicted that anyone involved in opening the
box could be in grave danger of dying within days.
The
cobalt-60 was left in a rural area about a kilometer (a half a mile)
from Hueypoxtla, an agricultural town of about 4,000 people, but it
posed no threat or a need for an evacuation, said Juan Eibenschutz,
director general of the National Commission of Nuclear Safety and
Safeguards.
"Fortunately there are no people where the source of radioactivity is," Eibenschutz said.
Commission
physicist Mardonio Jimenez said it was the first time cobalt-60 had
been stolen and extracted from its container. The only threat was to
whoever opened the box and later discarded the pellets of high-intensity
radioactive material that was being transported to a waste site. It had
been used in medical equipment for radiation therapy.
"The
person or people who this took out are in very great risk of dying,"
Jimenez said, adding that the normal survival rate would be between one
and three days.
He said there was no word so
far of anyone reporting to area hospitals with radiation exposure. He
said those who exposed themselves to the pellets could not contaminate
others.
Federal police and military units on the scene put up a cordon of 500 meters (yards) around the site.
The
cargo truck hauling the cobalt-60 was stolen from a gas station early
Tuesday in the neighboring state of Hidalgo, about 40 kilometers (24
miles) from where the material was recovered, Jimenez said. Authorities
had put out an alert in six central states and the capital looking for
it.
The truck was taking the cobalt to a nuclear waste facility in the state of Mexico, which is adjacent to Mexico City.
The
material was used in obsolete radiation therapy equipment that is being
replaced throughout Mexico's public health system. It was coming from
the general hospital in the northern border city of Tijuana, Eibenshutz
said.
Before the container was found, he said
the thieves most likely wanted the white 2007 Volkswagen cargo vehicle
with a moveable platform and crane.
Eibenschutz
said there was nothing to indicate the theft of the cobalt was
intentional or in any way intended for an act of terrorism.
On
average, a half dozen thefts of radioactive materials are reported in
Mexico each year and none have proven to be aimed at the cargo itself,
he said.
According to the complaint of this
theft, a truck marked "Transportes Ortiz" left Tijuana on Nov. 28 and
was headed to the storage facility when the driver stopped to rest at a
gas station in Tepojaco, in Hidalgo state north of Mexico City.
The
driver, Valentin Escamilla Ortiz, told authorities he was sleeping in
the truck when two men with a gun approached about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.
They made him get out, tied his hands and feet and left him in a vacant
lot nearby.
When he was able to free himself, he ran back to the gas station to get help.
Eibenschutz said the transport company did not follow proper procedures and should have had GPS and security with the truck.
"The driver also lacked common sense because he decided to park along a highway so he could sleep," Eibenschutz said.
The
company couldn't immediately be located for comment. One Mexico City
company called "Transportes Ortiz" said the truck was not theirs and
they had nothing to do with the incident.
Eibenschutz
had said early in the day that direct exposure to cobalt-60 could
result in death within a few minutes, but Jimenez said the pellets
involved were sealed.
The health risk depends
on time of exposure and distance to the pellets, said Dr. Fred Mettler, a
University of New Mexico's radiology professor and a U.S.
representative to the U.N. on radiation safety.
"If
you hold the source in your hand for five or six or eight minutes you
are probably going to get enough radiation to your whole body that may
well kill you," he said. "But if somebody is across the street, they are
not going to enough to really make them sick."
