Nope, in the middle of a parking lot in Portland, Oregon, not even anywhere near a restaurant.
Recreational math is fun. How long do you think it took them to remove the end-piece of that thing? The news said originally that it was in a sealed container that is hard to take apart. And I saw other pictures that showed the crate the thing was in, with clear warnings stenciled on it.
My guess is that they did receive large doses, because it wasnât a 5 minute job breaking into the thing. And they left it all in pieces and the CO is accounted for. My guess is they fiddled with it for hours, finally got it apart, tried to fish out the guts, couldnât do it, got bored and took off.
They are walking dead.
Just ridiculously large quantities of radiationâŚ
Transporting 3000 Ci of any radionuclide is not a very common event â in the U.S. transporting more than 810 Ci of Co-60 requires lots of notifications, real-time tracking, driver communication capabilities, etc. Most other countries have similar rules since they are based on international, IAEA, standards.
What if you get a major prize in the mail that has a word that seems to sound like frajeelay?
Yep, if the source is 3000 Ci they will get a lethal dose in about 1.5 min if they are ~30 cm away.
I would have thought it would require armed guards anywhere 
Thatâs sorta like putting armed guards on a garbage scow. Nobody who knows what it is wants to steal it., and nobody whoâs shipping it really wants to call more attention to it due to possible public backlash.
Travelling with a hazmat team, in case of a road accident, might make more sense.Wouldnât have helped directly in this case but might have convinced the hijackers that they wanted to go away empty-handed or at least leave the cargo in competent hands and steal only the truck.
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I think the main benefit of transporting it on the sly is to avoid Greenpeace and the likes chaining themselves to the truck. Some kind of light police escort and transporting only during daylight hours would make sense. You donât need much of a police presence to convince someone looking to make a random theft that itâs worth passing on this one and picking the next truck. Itâs a bit like a recent case in the UK where some bozos stole 40 anti-tank land mines from a military train rolling past.
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I smell a Raceway with shitty coffee ten miles north of here!
I think that armed guards are only required for large quantities of special nuclear material (stuff that can be made into a nuke bomb).
Actually, transport of ridiculously large quantities of Co-60 is probably relatively common⌠I forgot about gamma knife units that use ~6000 Ci of Co-60 ( I always think of Co-60 treatment units as being obsolete technology, but gamma knives are cutting edge tech). Iâm not sure if they do a full replacement of all the sources at a time or if they only do a portion of them, but there are at least a few hundred units worldwide, so on any given day there is a good chance that a few thousand Ci of Co-60 is being moved around. (not to mention absurdly large quantities required for sterilization irradiators)
No, you didnât. You got what could be expected. Thatâs not the same as what you deserve.
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