Some things are often lost on a journey. but losing an average is not the same as what just happened in Australia. There the mining company Rio Tinto lost a radioactive capsule of Cesium-137 (Cs-137), a small cylinder, but harmful.

It all starts on January 25. Those responsible for the multinational Rio Tinto had to inform the authorities about this he had lost one of his radioactive capsules, a small stainless steel cylinder of only 8×6 millimeters (mm), but with sufficient cesium-137 content to cause damage.

In mines, Cesium-137 capsules are useful because they are often incorporated into radiation meters that help measure the density of certain materials. For example, if the piece had fallen in the middle of the road and someone was unlucky enough to find it, it can cause skin damage, burns and even radiation-related illnesses.

Rio Tinto has promised to open an investigation into what happened, but in theory the capsule is said to have detached from a radiation indicator during transport aboard a truck from the Gudai-Darri mine to a warehouse in Perth’s northwestern suburbs. Vibrations from the trip would have caused the bolts to loosen and the capsule to fall through a crevice and fall off the truck.

The route the truck traveled was 1,400 kilometers. Authorities said the mission was like this “to look for a needle in a haystack”. Firefighters, specialists, the disaster response service and teams of radiation protection experts were mobilized. Australia has deployed 100 workers from at least five government agencies.

Civilians were warned about the risk that the capsule could pose and he advised that, in case they found it, they should keep their distance.

“It emits beta and gamma radiation, so if you have it close to you, you could suffer skin damage, including burns,” Western Australia’s health director Andy Robertson said in a BBC statement. After all, the problem wasn’t just that it was at a remote point on that 900-mile route, but that the piece got caught in the tire of another vehicle and took an unpredictable path.

When the authorities saw that the search was unsuccessful, they used devices that could track the capsule from cars traveling at 50 km/h. The capsule was found Wednesday morning, February 1. on a desert road south of Newmannot far from the mine he came from. The piece was two meters from the road.