Scrap Cobalt-60 results in injured in New Delhi

[Atlan]

Oh damn.

Five Indians injured by dirty bomb material in Delhi market
Five people suffering serious burns were hospitalized in West New Delhi this week from contact with radioactive material in a Delhi scrap market identified as Cobalt-60 which may be used for making a dirty bomb. Indian police cordoned off the 200 market stores and sealed nearby establishments up to a one-kilometer radius. Scrap dealer Deepak Jain and his helpers lost consciousness when they cut a piece of scrap metal. A white fluid oozed out causing the burns, Jain's hair fell out and within minutes his skin turned black. His workers suffered and nausea.
All five are battling for their lives in hospital, setting off a security scare in the Indian capital, with prime minister Manmohan Singh briefed on the incident before leaving for Washington to attend the nuclear security summit which opened Monday, April 12.
Nuclear scientists from the Baba Atomic Research Center and Narora Atomic Power Plant identified the material and are working around the clock to investigate its source.

debkafile's sources report that German chancellor Angela Merkel has asked to talk with Obama about the dirty bomb terrorist threat when they meet Tuesday.

Cobalt-60 is used in radiotherapy for treating cancer and welding steel. A US report last year recommended monitoring this material along with Caesium-137, Strontium-90 and Plutonium to effectively counter nuclear terrorism. Unlike a nuclear bomb, a dirty bomb does not involve nuclear fission and can be used like a conventional weapon.

Ahead of the Washington conference, US president Barack Obama called nuclear terror "the single biggest threat to US security, short term, medium and long-term."

The day before the conference, the Indian prime minister met Obama and tackled him about Pakistan's inaction against Muslim terrorists and exhorted him to jointly combat terror emanating from Pakistan as the most dangerous source of potential nuclear terror. According to debkafile's military and intelligence sources, the Indian and US leaders failed to agree on whether Pakistan's nuclear arsenal was sufficiently secure. Indian leaders as well as their military and intelligence advisers have repeatedly warned Washington that al Qaeda and Taliban were moving in on Pakistan's nuclear facilities through their deep penetration of Pakistan's intelligence service and may soon be in position to take over.

In his previous conversations with Obama, Singh reported that Israeli intelligence shared India's assessment of the Pakistani nuclear hazard.

After his interview with the Indian prime minister, Obama discussed nuclear security with Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, who also arrived for the summit. The US president said Islamabad must do more to combat the terrorists infiltrating India for terrorist attacks.
Pakistani officials said later that Gillani assured the US president that Pakistani takes nuclear security seriously and appropriate safeguards are in place. They reported that the US president said he was satisfied with those measures, but this was not confirmed by US administration sources.

Indian sources:

Police in dark over origin of Cobalt-60 in Delhi
New Delhi: Police is yet to trace the origin of Cobalt-60, the radioactive material that caused serious injuries to six persons and are awaiting the recovery of the owner of the scrap shop from where it was found three days ago to get more clarity.
There is nothing concrete. We are waiting for Deepak Jain to regain his health. We are also waiting for reports from Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and other agencies," deputy commissioner of police (West) Sharad Aggarwal told PTI.

The official said nobody knew from where Jain had bought it. "Normally, scrap dealers never makes public their source of scrap as it will affect their business. So, nobody knows from where he bought it," he said.

Police had yesterday spoke to scrap dealers in the industrial area to ascertain the source of the material.

AERB experts, along with Department of Atomic Energy scientists, had yesterday safely removed eight bunches of metal scraps containing sources of Cobalt-60 radioactive isotope from the West Delhi shop and transported the material to the Narora Atomic Power Station in Uttar Pradesh.

AERB has said its probe into the source of Cobalt-60 pieces may help the Delhi Police trace the route through which it landed in the shop.

"Investigations are now in progress to ascertain the source of the radioactive cobalt-60, which was recovered from the scrap in a shop in Mayapuri," SA Hussain, head of Radiological Safety division of AERB, said.

Jain suffered severe burns and is battling for life at the Apollo Hospital while five others -- Gaurav, Rajendra Prasad, Ramjee Yadav, Ram Kalap and Himanshu Jain -- have been admitted to AIIMS.

All of them have been kept in an isolation ward.

Delhi radiation leak: Did Cobalt-60 come from abroad?
New Delhi: As investigators groped for clues to find the source of Cobalt-60 that created panic in West Delhi, the possibility of the nuclear material being part of some imported industrial waste is not being ruled out.
Scientists have removed the radioactive isotope from a scrap dealer's shop in an industrial area in Mayapuri and shifted it to Narora Atomic power plant in Uttar Pradesh for detailed analysis, official sources said today.

Security agencies are also looking into the possibility of whether the nuclear material found its way to other parts of the country.

The material was packed properly with all pracautions and taken to Narora plant at Bulandshahr for a detailed study of the scrap and try and ascertain its source.

Security agencies carried out raids in various parts of the areas adjoining the national capital in this connection.

The scientists who examined the scrap were of the opinion that the Cobalt-60 was not available in the country in a form that was found in Mayapuri, sources said. There was also a possibility that it could have been a part of the scrap that may have landed at Indian ports from abroad, they said.

Initial investigations showed that the scrap dealer Deepak Jain used to purchase scrap from wholesale dealers in Faridabad and Gurgaon with a countrywide network. It is for this reason that investigators want to rule out the possibility of any radioactive material finding its way to other parts of the country.

Jain, who is among the five people affected by the radiation exposure, is in a critical condition at a private hospital here and may have to under go bone-marrow transplant.

Cobalt-60 among other things is used for radiography to treat cancer patients.

Panic triggered in the Mayapuri locality last week following the radiation leak and five persons fell ill after coming in contact with a "mysterious shining object" in a scrap shop.

Cobalt-60 is a hard, lustrous and grey metal. Cobalt-based colours and pigments have been used since ancient times for jewellery and paints, and miners have long used the name kobold ore for some minerals.

Besides radiography, it is also used to measure thickness in nucleonic gauges and in medical applications.

DNAIndia Video Report

All scaremongering aside, if what DEBKA reported about the injuries of Deepak Jain and the others is true, those guys are dead, they just don't know it yet.

Leaving the rather obviously lacking nuclear control mechanisms and disaster plans in India aside, do any of our more knowledgable members have any comments? This is what I found quickly, but does anyone know more about this situation? I know that Cobalt-60 is industrial grade nastyness, so how the fuck does it end up on a scrap heap?

[Ryan Thunder]

Jesus Christ, they found that shit in a scrapyard? What kind of security is that?

[Alyeska]

Jesus Christ, they found that shit in a scrapyard? What kind of security is that?

Its a lot easier than you realize

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I recall it happened in Thailand as well. Lax controls in hospitals, and errant disposers, simply complicate matters.

[Kuroji]

Dear God.

If their hair fell out that quickly, they must've absorbed an insane amount of radiation. I would not be surprised if other people who were in the market will end up showing at the hospital in the coming days displaying symptoms of radiation poisoning. As for the ones who got the worst of it... if, and I stress if the report is accurate, there is no hope for these men. They will not survive.

If anything they'll recover for a couple of days and then just... crash.

[PeZook]

I wouldn't say there is no hope, though the probability of their survival is rather low. There were people at the Chernobyl NPP who also absorbed gigantic doses of radiation and survived for a long time afterwards.

Anatoly Dyatlov, who supervised the test at the plant, only died in 1995 despite breathing in contaminated concrete dust, and was healthy enough to write a couple of books about the accident.

Nikolai Gorbachenko lives to this day despite taking a similar dose as Dyatlov.

There was a technician whose name I don't recall who was close enough to the reactor that he could see the glowing molten core, and he didn't even go blind. Still alive, though plagued with health problems.

[Kuroji]

Perhaps I shouldn't say there is no hope, considering the medical technology we have is more advanced than it was the last time we had a serious radiation accident. But the odds of them surviving this... probably about as high right now as them getting struck by lightning.

[starslayer]

I can easily see why Dyatlov survived for quite a while, and Gorbachenko still lives; the dust would be mostly laced with uranium and its fission byproducts, with the bulk being uranium. Uranium is a low-grade alpha emitter (half life of 700 million years for U-235, the dominant isotope in a fission reactor) and is quite heavy, so it really wouldn't be very mobile, and even if inhaled, most of it would be expelled fairly quickly (being a heavy metal, it can be quite toxic on its own, but few of its common compounds are easily soluble in the body). Most of the daughter products spewed out by the explosion would have extremely short half-lives, and wouldn't cause much damage before disappearing. Even the technician who saw the glowing core would not have received an extremely heavy dose, due to both the inverse square law, and the fact that most of the ionizing radiation was being absorbed, hence the glowing molten metal bit.

Co-60 is something else entirely. It decays by beta emission (followed by two MeV level gamma rays as the resulting Ni-60 atom falls to the ground state) and has a half-life of only about 5 years, so that shit is HOT. The exposed scrap workers will not survive, especially if the burns, hair loss, and blackened skin (indicating complete tissue death) appeared that quickly (from the articles, it seemed like it happened almost immediately, or within a few minutes). Even Louis Slotin didn't get that sick that fast, and he was right next to a critical-mass plutonium reaction.

Just to give a quick depiction of the workers' predicament: their bone marrow is completely destroyed, and their gastrointestinal lining is completely dead, and will begin sloughing itself off soon (and come out as bloody diarrhea), with nothing to replace it (seriously, the entire lining is simply gone if they've received as much radiation as I think they have). The resulting sepsis will kill them, and there is nothing anybody can do about it.

As for the how the source got there, it was almost certainly lazy/negligent disposal from a hospital, research facility, or chemical lab of some sort. Because the radiation it gives off is so intense, it's a very effective sterilization tool, and is often used as a radioactive source for research purposes. While very dangerous in large amounts, it is not considered a large security risk, so long as proper disposal techniques are used. Of course, "proper disposal" is the key phrase there.

[PeZook]

That's a pretty good point ; I haven't thought that Cobalt-60 is much nastier than most isotopes expelled at Chernobyl, so I guess the comparison between radiation deaths there and in this care are not really valid, even despite the vastly longer exposure for most people at Chernobyl.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Technically, Co-60 is quite the ideal radiation grenade. In the similar incident that happened in Thailand, the scavengers died because some hospital dumbed their crap in some random scrapyard.

[UnderAGreySky]

It's not entirely shocking. Disposal standards in India are somewhere between 'lax' and 'non-existent', and coupled with the fact that we're an attractive destination for foreign countries to send their stuff for scrapping (especially things that would cost a lot to break up due to toxicity) this happens more often than you hear about. Only off late has Greenpeace been raising a stink about things like asbestos-lined ships being sent to India for breaking up in yards where people haven't a clue about the dangers involved...

[Lord of the Abyss]

Googling for an update, I see that it appears that more radioactive substances have been found.

Another radiation leak in Delhi, one falls sick

New Delhi, Apr 14: Less than a week after a radiation leak was reported from the Mayapuri industrial area, yet another source of radiation has been identified, which has led to another person falling sick.


"We have been alerted about one more source of radiation in the Mayapuri area. It is smaller in size than the earlier one," informed Dr B Bhattacharya, Member, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).


He added that four experts from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), 15 from NDMA and an expert from Atomic Energy Regulatory Board will begin the work on the new source on Thursday, Apr 14.

On Apr 8, radiation leak was reported from the same Mayapuri area. The source of the radiation which was later identified as Cobalt 60, a radioactive substance, which led to five people falling sick. Two of the victims are in a critical condition and are battling for their lives at the hospital.

Even a week after its detection, the Delhi police are not able to give any answers on how the radioactive cobalt reached the scrap shop. Investigating officers are still waiting for a report from Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).

[aieeegrunt]

So would this make a good dirty bomb then if you blew it into dust that people inhaled? This seems pretty scary if you can just find the stuff in random third world scrapyards.

[Kuroji]

Yeah, it most certainly would. If you're exposed to a radiation source inside your body instead of outside, there's less getting between you and the radiation source itself.

Outside or on the skin, well, at least you have that protecting your internal organs slightly. If inhaled or eaten... there's nothing stopping the particles from hitting the more vulnerable parts of your body. And for that matter, the radiation source would be closer to the organs in question -- instead of being perhaps at arm's length, it's already inside your lungs and stomach, and that'll just fry your gizzards. Or at the very least, increase your cancer risk by a couple thousand times.

If you're really unfortunate, you'll get a nosefull of radiation and suddenly you can't smell or taste and your brain is misfiring.

Either way, you'd end up needing a lead casket if the radiation is serious enough to kill you. Six feet of soil isn't going to suffice, and you cannot cremate someone who's radioactive, because that'll just spread the particles further and cause more death.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

So would this make a good dirty bomb then if you blew it into dust that people inhaled? This seems pretty scary if you can just find the stuff in random third world scrapyards.

Cobalt-60 is a pretty good candidate for salting an area with radioactive material, yes. There are many many civilian applications for Cobalt-60, from gamma-ray sources etc.

[Kuroji]

Zinc is the next best thing, but the only thing you're going to find that's already hot and has the properties you want is going to be Cobalt-60. (edit: zinc, not gold, gold's only radioactive for a matter of days.)

If, on the other hand, you're insane enough to build a salted nuclear bomb and you already have the uranium... this gives you a rough estimate of how long you'd keep people from wanting to live where you set it off, aside of course from the waste from the uranium when it goes off.

As far as anyone has ever said, no government has been insane enough to build a salted nuclear bomb. Anyone who wants to would be well and truly insane, by my estimation.

[Shroom Man 777]

One of the problems with weaponizing this, and making a dirty bomb, is that aside from scumming about in random junk shops hoping to figure out where a shitty hospital threw away its crappy equipment, the Mohammad Jihads who'd scour the junk yards would have to do so while wearing cumbersome protective gear too, rite?

[Kuroji]

Depends whether you really care very much about them (i.e. whether they're expendable) and whether you can convince them to stay in a cave or hotel room and hide their now-hot corpse if they do find what they're looking for. Of course if they're the type to actually believe they'll be martyrs to this end, that's one thing, and if you're running around scrapyards with geiger counters people are going to be very suspicious, presumably. But on the other hand if you can fake IDs well enough and give your people the necessary training, they could poke around with the geiger counters, stay away from anywhere that's hot and just wear the protection gear to, ahem, 'dispose' of the material.

On the other hand, in all honesty, I'm less worried about a dirty bomb (which will probably spread whatever material over a relatively small area) and more worried about a salted bomb. A salted bomb will show that whoever it is actually does have the capability to build a nuke in whatever form they like, and that they chose to do it in the absolutely most destructive way possible.

Talking purely theoretically, if you detonated a salted bomb on the roof of a major city... assuming you can get the materials in there, and you'd probably have to assemble it on site because there's no fucking way you're going to get a fully assembled homemade nuke onto the roof... but if you can do that, you can functionally depopulate the city and anything maybe a hundred miles downwind of it. And if you're using a salted bomb it won't be 'okay, it's safe to go back in a year', it'll be 'this city is closed until 2150' since, with cobalt, it'll be reduced in its radioactive output to nearly as low as a tenth of its level by then.

Seriously, if I was a terrorist? That's what I'd do. On the other hand... well, my job requires me to go 'oh shit, what if'; I have no intent of ever doing something this batshit insane. Fortunately for me and everyone a hundred miles downwind, school shootings are a lot more likely than that kind of crap...

[Sarevok]

Directly stealing from a hospital by bribing staff and security would be easier than poking around in trash. You would probably lose a few good operatives in the bioweapons grade smelly and rotting trash found in third world if they tried to diving into that shit (as in literally human shit).

[Kuroji]

The amount you'd need to steal to make a viable dirty bomb, and the fact that generally those machines are pretty big and if you take the material out without taking the protective parts of the machine you're going to glow in the dark (along with anyone in the hospital that walks past you), makes that more difficult. But yeah, that would probably be easier.

[Broomstick]

My dad used to be involved in pharmaceutical security at a Detroit hosptal - that would be making sure anything dangerous is properly tracked, accounted for, and disposed of, from cocaine and opiates to cancer chemotherapy drugs (all highly toxic - that's how they work, after all) to, yes, radioactives. There are special casks for transporting medical radioactive isotopes that can be easily carried by one person. Of course, the warning signs emblazoned all over them and shocking bright colors make them quite noticeable, but a can of spray paint can take care of those, making the containers far less conspicuous. Diversion/improper disposal has been a concern for decades, it's sort of wonder these accidents don't happen more often.

How feasible it is to weaponize such stuff depends a lot on how expendable your operatives are. It is probably feasible to hire some poor ignorant schmucks to handle the really deadly crap without telling them what it is, and with little or no safety gear, then high tail it out of there before they get sick and die. They will then be someone else's problem.

I'm sure the scrap dealers here had absolutely no idea what they had gotten hold of, they're innocent victims of someone else's carelessness. There's no telling how much more of this sort garbage is out there.

I'm a little unclear on how rapidly everything progressed in this case. Some news articles give the impression that someone touched the stuff and instantly their hair fell out and their skin turned black - that strikes me as highly unlikely. Other articles say the men were sleeping in close proximity to the stuff for about 5 days, which makes a lot more sense. in regards to time and symptoms.

People have, rarely, recovered from a level of radiation poisoning that involved destruction of the intestinal lining, but only when there was sufficient viable tissue left that could heal and resume digestive functions. Needing a bone marrow transplant is an ominous sign, as that indicates marrow death, which also usually means intestinal death. The men that sick are unlikely to survive regardless of what care they receive, though they might undergo a brief "reprieve" where they feel somewhat better before they finally die. And, again, a few have survived after receiving marrow transplants, it's just not a common outcome. That happened to some of the Chernobyl victims, a number of them became extremely ill, then had a few weeks of relative good feeling physically, yet they also knew they doomed to "relapse" shortly and die. Having skin blacken is also a bad sign - if they were irradiated badly enough to kill their skin, or at least a significant percentage of it, that would also be fatal. The authorities may be treating them aggressively in hopes they will recover enough to discuss where they obtained the cobalt 60 before their final decline.

No doubt the Indians are seeking people who are ill, but less seriously affected.

[aieeegrunt]

What about posing as a hospital or otherwise ordering and then diverting the equipment?

[Broomstick]

Why bother, when obviously there are junked machines lying around for the taking?

[Kuroji]

But does anyone keep track of where most of those junked machines are? I don't think we'd be in this mess if we did, which also means they'll still have quite a time of trying to get the used machines.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Cobalt-60 was also the jacket they were considering for some nukes the MoD was contemplating in the '60s, before the whole idea was seen as unworkable or insane.

I know where I work we have to watch what we do with the wastes I deal with, though they're chemical, we have had liquid chromatography columns in the past that contain various radioisotopes from tritium to Polonium-210. We couldn't just sling those in the standard incinerator bin like everything else, and in cases of radiolabelled test compounds, we send those back to the company that synthesized it for us to test in the first place, since a few grammes may have cost hundreds of thousands to produce initially. The most interesting case I can think of is actually the CS gas in our pharmacy department. It's in a locked firearms cabinet, and can't be even touched because when we were using it for a study years ago, a temporary firearms licence was required from the Home Office. It expired and the cost of getting another one (along with the paperwork) is too much to bother removing what is technically a chemical weapon.

I've not looked at the figures, but I bet waste disposal is a large chunk of our budget, and there's been a big push recently to try and deal with how we store or dispose of contaminated lab materials or bio-hazardous tissue in a more cost efficient manner. With the rise of Big Pharma in China and India, and their horrendous (relatively) governing standards, expect more of this kind of thing with toxic waste.