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Stolen radioactive material in Mexico found
 
By:
Fri, 6 Dec 2013   ||   Nigeria,
 

Mexican authorities say they’ve recovered all of the radioactive material taken this week from a stolen truck.

The vehicle, along with the missing radioactive element had been accounted for in that same area.

Cobalt-60 is highly radioactive, according to Mexico’s National Civil Protection Office, but is only a health risk to those directly exposed to it.

Mexican authorities told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the truck, which was transporting the material from a hospital in Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage center, was stolen Monday in Tepojaco, near Mexico City.

The suspected thieves are still on the loose, though authorities expect they could turn up at a clinic suffering symptoms of radiation exposure.

The container holding cobalt was found about a kilometer (half a mile) away from the truck and had been opened, said Juan Eibenschutz Hartman, head of Mexico’s National Commission for Nuclear Security and Safeguards.

There was less than 40 grams (1.4 ounces) of the hazardous material inside the capsule.

 

 

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