this probably hasn’t made the news in other countries - huge mining company Rio Tinto managed to lose this little capsule (8 x 6 mm) somewhere in West Australia:
it’s caesium-137, the stuff that has made Chernobyl uninhabitable, and you don’t want to be standing within 5-10 meters of it, because it’s blasting out beta and gamma rays. you REALLY don’t want to pick it up, because it’ll give you radiation burns.
what’s nuts is it seems to have somehow escaped from its “secure” container and fallen out of a bolt hole while being transported, and then nobody noticed for TWO WEEKS.
anyway there are fire fighters on their sixth day of scouring 1,400 km (!) of desert road right now, but it’s so small that it may never be found (I think the detection radius with the equipment they’re using is maybe 20m). it’s so small that it could have stuck in a car’s tire treads, or been picked up by an unfortunate bird or other wildlife. it has a half-life of 30 years, which means it’ll be dangerously radioactive for centuries.
