AFP/Mexico City
Mexican authorities yesterday scrambled to find a truck containing “extremely dangerous” radioactive material used in medical treatment that was stolen by two gunmen two days ago, officials said.
The white Volkswagen truck was transporting a “teletherapy source” containing cobalt-60 when it was stolen on Monday in the central Hidalgo state town of Tepojaco, north of Mexico City, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
The driver told investigators that the gunmen approached him at a service station, tied him up and drove away with the truck, according to a text of the testimony shown by the Hidalgo state prosecutor’s office.
The radioactive material came from a hospital in the northwestern city of Tijuana and had been on its way to a waste storage centre in the central state of Mexico, authorities said.
“At the time the truck was stolen, the source was properly shielded. However, the source could be extremely dangerous to a person if removed from the shielding, or if it was damaged,” an IAEA statement said.
Mexico’s National Commission for Nuclear Safety and Safeguards (CNSNS) released a picture of the steel-reinforced wood container and the teletherapy equipment being lowered into it.
The commission, which reported the theft to the IAEA, said the material posed no risk provided it was not broken or tampered with.
A search was under way in six states and in Mexico City for the truck, which has an integrated crane, the CNSNS said. The theft occurred an hour’s drive north of the capital.
The commission gave phone numbers for anyone with information to call.
“Whoever has or finds the equipment is urged not to open or damage it, as in these cases it can cause severe health problems,” it said.
Mexico’s drug cartels have diversified their illegal activities in recent years, stealing oil by piercing pipelines and extracting coal and iron ore, but officials have not said who the cobalt-60 thieves might be.
Experts have long warned about the risks posed by the large amounts of radioactive material held in hospitals, university campuses and factories, often with little or no security measures to prevent them being stolen.
Cobalt-60 “has figured in several serious source accidents including fatalities because the material was obtained and handled by people who were not aware of its danger,” said Mark Hibbs, analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“There are many thousands of these sources worldwide. There is in most countries a regime to keep them safe and secure, but if they are stolen or lost, many people would be unaware that the radioactive contents locked up inside could threaten their lives,” Hibbs said.
More worryingly, though, such material could in theory be put in a so-called “dirty bomb”—an explosive device designed to spread the radioactive material over a wide area.
Major international efforts have been made since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US to prevent nuclear material falling into the wrong hands.
US President Barack Obama hosted a summit in 2010 on the subject, followed by another in Seoul last year. A third is planned in The Hague in March 2014.
IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said in July at a major nuclear security conference that many countries had taken effective measures but warned against a “false sense of security”.
A report issued in July by the Arms Control Association and the Partnership for Global Security said progress had been made reducing the threat but that “significant” work remained.
In an incident showing how dangerous such materials are, in Goiania, Brazil in 1987 a machine containing a substance similar to cobalt-60, caesium-137, was left lying around after a cancer unit of a hospital moved.
The material was exposed after two people dismantled when they thought it might have scrap value. Eighty-five houses were contaminated and 249 people needed medical treatment. Twenty-eight people suffered radiation burns and four died including a six-year-girl who handled the substance while eating.