Background from the Guardian:
Western Australian authorities are scrambling to find a missing radioactive capsule that is a fraction of the size of a 10c coin, conceding it was not found missing until more than two weeks after it left a Rio Tinto mine site.
The 8mm by 6mm capsule is a 19-gigabecquerel caesium 137 ceramic source, commonly used in radiation gauges, and was supposed to be contained in a secure device which had been “damaged” on a truck which travelled from the mine site north of Newman in the Pilbara to a depot in Perth.
Authorities are now searching along the 1,400km stretch of the Great Northern Highway for the capsule, which they warn can cause skin burns, radiation sickness and cancer.
(Note: article previously stated that the source was 19 Bq, which is implausibly low, it was later updated to 19 GBq)
Market will resolve on credible media reports published in 2023, stating that the capsule has been found.
For simplicity, the market will resolve NO if no such media reports have been published by end of year 2023, even if it is later revealed that the capsule was found in 2023.
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@Odoacre No effort on my part, I got a notification from someone in a group chat linking to this tweet: https://twitter.com/6NewsAU/status/1620680071991410688
So I checked major Aus news sites for an article international people might recognise as a reputable media source that would satisfy question resolution.
@chrisjbillington I searched for updates about ithe capsule maybe 1 hour ago and there was nothing yet. I am not in many group chats, and the ones I have are muted so there's that 😂 I guess I qualify for "living under a rock"
More from hacker news:
Radiation detection is my specialty. This source is Cs-137, few hundred mCi. It's easy to detect within a few seconds at distances of a few tens of meters or more with professional detection equipment if there is direct line of sight.
If it was knocked off the road, though, the question will be if it fell into a crack or other such place because then the radiation is somewhat shielded and it would take much more measuring time to identify it.
I suspect if a few passes with vehicle-mounted detectors don't find it then some drones with detectors traveling along the sides of the road would be a good next step. If a critter moved it or ate it then it's probably gone forever. At a distance of 1 meter the dose rate from that source is already not extremely hazardous unless a person were exposed for an extended period of time (like a full day or two). Getting closer, like putting it directly against your torso, would mean serious health effects in a matter of minutes.
I note that travelling 1400km non-stop at one metre per second would take 16 days.
@BradSaillard here is a comment from hacker news going into some detail about the likely type.of source and packing:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34572750
And in brief from this NYT article:
According to the authorities, the sensor containing the capsule was placed inside a wooden box, which was screwed onto a pallet and placed in the back of a flatbed truck.
They believe that vibrations from the truck 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 off into the road.
And some thoyg
If anyone is trying to figure out how detectable it is, it might be one of these:
https://www.qsa-global.com/industrial-cs-137-gamma-sources
With an activity somewhere in the range of 37 MBq – 370 GBq.
Manifold in the wild: A Tweet by Chris Billington
Made a prediction market on "the capsule". Interested to see if people think it can be found. https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/will-the-radioactive-capsule-lost-i?r=Y2hyaXNqYmlsbGluZ3Rvbg