On January 12 a truck pulled out of Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri iron ore mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and drove 1,400km south to Perth, arriving on January 16.
Nine days later, on January 25, it was discovered the truck had lost a rather special piece of cargo somewhere along the way: a tiny capsule containing a highly radioactive substance, used in a radiation gauge on the mine site.
A bolt and screws in the package were also missing, and authorities suspect the fixings shook loose during the trip and the capsule fell out of the hole left by the bolt.
