It is 0200 in the morning on 2 December 2013, and a truck had just driven into a petrol station,
in Tepojaco, in the municipality of Tizayuca, in Hidalgo State.
The driver and his assistant are being watched,
quickly they are bundled out of the cab and his truck and its cargo are stolen.
The driver reports the theft to his employer who then reports it to the police,
this incident would trigger a country wide search,
the urgency in finding the truck is something out of the ordinary for just a regular truck jacking.
Well as the two thieves make off with the truck and cargo into the night they
are unaware of how much danger they are in, and it’s not from the police.
Background
Our story starts at the medical institute “Institute Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS)”
located in Tijuana, Baja California State, where the oncology department is making a change.
For over 50 years, like all over the world, radioactive sources have been
used for the treatment of cancer, and the cancer center in Tijuana was no different.
They had been using a common candidate for most lost radioactive source cobalt 60,
but unsurprisingly this adds a little bit of danger to the mix, well not really if
properly stored and maintained, but we've seen in reality this isnt always the case.
They also have another downside, that is decay, you see a radioactive isotope
loses its potency over time which means it needs to be replaced, and this adds cost.
This problem was kind of solved with the change over to linear accelerators. They
produce a more reliable, flexible and accurate radiation beam, without the need for cobalt 60.
Brilliant, but what to do with all those older potentially deadly machines,
space confines and security concerns meant that they can;t just be left somewhere for
many years to decay to a stable state, instead they need to be disposed of.
This would be the fate of one such teletherapy machine,
it’s head which was where the cobalt 60 lived was packed up and placed on a flatbed truck.
It is at roughly a quarter of its radioactivity from 2002 originally measured at 458 tbq
it is in 2013 at roughly 100, but it is by no means safe.
It is classed as a category 1 source being described as
“This source, if not safely managed or securely protected,
would be likely to cause permanent injury to a person who handled it or who was otherwise
in contact with it for more than a few minutes. It would probably be fatal to be close to this
amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period in the range of a few minutes to an hour.”
The trucks journey is a long one, about 31 hours if driven non stop.
The destination is the radioactive waste storage
centre “Centro de Almacenamiento de Desechos Radiactivos (CADER)” located
near the town of Santa María Maquixco, Temascalapa municipality, Mexico State.
The heist
In the early hours of the 2nd December 2013 the two men in
the truck pulled into a petrol station in Tepojaco, to get some Much needed rest.
Two carjackers saw this as an opportunity to make some Money,
they attacked the driver and his assistant and stole the truck and its cargo.
Ok calling this a heist gives the men a bit too much credit, the truck was stolen
to be cut up for parts and whatever the cargo was would be an extra payday bonus.
On the same day as the theft the two car jackers sold on the
truck and it’s cargo to a local scrap merchant.
no questions asked and the crossing of some palms the
big metal telepherapy shielding is being evaluated for its scra worth.
5 workers are on site and they begin dismantling the telepherapy head.
Now this might sound like dejavu well that’s because scrap dealers acquiring and cutting
up radioactive material shielding is an all too common event, too common for my liking.
Soon enough these 5 workers began to exhibit the tell tale signs of radiation sickness.
For whatever reason one of the men took parts of the source head as
well as the co60 and dumped them in a nearby field and on the 3rd December.
A local resident saw this and went to investigate he found a
long cylindrical metal piece, it was warm to the touch and heavy.
The resident lifted it onto his shoulder and moved it approximately 15 meters from the dump site.
Meanwhile the search efforts were well underway.
The search
The driver and his assistant reported the theft at around 08am on the 2nd December,
this set off a chain reaction with the Federal Police and the
Committee on International Disarmament, Terrorism and Security were informed.
The next day source search activities began 4 teams with radiation monitoring equipment
were dispatched to search a 5km radius area from where the truck was stolen.
On the 5th the search radius was expanded to 10km
sightings of the stolen truck were reported in Hueypoxtla municipality.
Whilst securing the area federal police officers were approached by a local resident who claimed to
have a mysterious price of metal in his backyard, this turned out to be the empty teletherapy head.
The police detected slightly elevated radiation levels around
the residents house, but frustratingly no source.
But just under 1km to the east, radiation monitoring
equipment detected proper elevated levels, in an uninhabited field.
The National Nuclear Safety and Safeguards Commission dispatched
a team to the site of the higher radiation levels,
they advised the police to establish a 1km exclusion area around the source.
It was time to recover the co60.
Even though they knew the source must be in the field they couldn’t actually see it,
this is because it had been hidden earlier by a local resident,
but dosimeters did give a rough idea of where it was.
Two perimeters were established where the radiation levels were at 100 μSv/h and 500 mSv/h.
But although a good headway had been made night enveloped the
area hindering recovery they would have to wait until the next day.
On the 5th December teams from the police, nuclear safety commission,
Laguna verde nuclear power plant, and the navy searched the area
carefully marking off sections that did not have high radiation levels,
this was in order to narrow down the source without risking the Heath of the search parties.
Towards the end of the day and with a pretty well surveyed area,
an action plan was conceived to recover the source.
On the 6th the approximate location was found but it looked like the source was
hidden under some straw, unsurprisingly this would
cause more delay to recovery as the source had to be clear for recovery.
You don’t want to try picking up a source unless you know it’s all there,
just look at the headache goiania caused with it’s opened source container.
At least by now they had a reasonable idea of how big of a transport container they needed,
to get to the source the straw and crops needed to be removed and it would require a robot.
The resident who had told them about the scrap metal in his garden turned
out to be the same guy who had hidden the source, on the 7th December he told
the police the exact location and finally they had confirmed where the source was.
It would take another 2 days of with the robot clearing the crops,
and finally on the 9th the source container was visible and thankfully not damaged.
Now how to recover the source, well that robot which was doing the crop
clearing would turn out to be pretty useful.
On the 10th of December using the robots onboard camera operators
were able to recover the source after 2 attempts.
It was placed inside the newly fabricated container and once the lid was placed over it,
radiation levels returned to below iaea recommended safe recordings.
After the best part of a week the source was back
on a truck being transported to a facility in Ocoyoacac, Mexico State.
But what of those who had been all too close to the source.
Well the scrap yard workers weren’t hard to find
the 5 men were arrested and taken to Hospital de Pachuca, for treatment.
The two carjackers were arrested some time later,
all 7 men were charged on the 1 February 2014, with
Organized crime of vehicle theft; Theft of vehicle;
Dismantling of a stolen motor vehicle; Reception of a stolen motor vehicle;
Theft of teletherapy unit head and 60Co source; Abandonment of radioactive substances.
Now the whole incident highlights the risks of radioactive material transportation and
storage , Mexico isn’t unique as there have been severel cases of orphaned sources due to theft.
Funnily if the car jackers had targeted almost any other
vehicle it would have been likely they would have got away with it.
The event did result in Mexican authorities learning
how to improve security and search operations.
Right so this weeks subject I’m going to rate it oh balls and 3 on my legacy scale,
due to the legacy being relatively localized.
If you want to find out more check out the iaea
report in the description it acted as the frame work for this video.
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/IAEA-RAD-INCweb.pdf