 It is 2 o'clock in the morning on the 2nd of December 2013 and a truck has just driven into a petrol station in Tepoyaco in the municipality of Tiseyuca in Hidalgo State, Mexico. The driver and his assistant are being watched. Quickly they are bundled out of the cab and the truck and its cargo are stolen. The driver reports the theft to his employer who then reports it to the police. This incident would trigger a country wide search. The urgency in finding the truck is something out of the ordinary for just a regular truck jacking. Well, as the two thieves make off with the truck into the night, they are unaware of how much danger they are actually in. And spoiler alert, it's not from the police. Background It starts at the Medical Institute, Instituto Mexicano del Segrio Social, located in Tijuana Baja California State, where the oncology department is making a change. For over 50 years, like all over the world, radioactive sources have been used for the treatment of cancer and the cancer centre in Tijuana is no different. They have been using a common candidate for most lost radioactive source in history, also known as Cobalt 60. But unsurprisingly, using this radioisotope adds a little bit of danger to the cancer treatment mix. Well not really if properly stored and maintained, but we've seen in reality this isn't always the case. They also have another downside, which is decay. You see, a radioisotope loses its potency over time, which means it needs to be replaced, and this has a cost. This problem was kind of solved with the change over to linear accelerators. They produce a more reliable, flexible and accurate beam of radiation, without a need for Cobalt 60. Brilliant, but what to do with all those older potentially deadly machines? These confines and security concerns usually mean that they can't just be left somewhere on site for the many years to decay to a stable state, instead they need to be properly disposed of. This would be the fate of one such tele-therapy machine. Its head, which was where the Cobalt 60 lived, was packed up and placed on a flatbed truck. It is at roughly a quarter of its radioactivity from 2002, when it was originally measured at 458 tB. It is in 2013 low at roughly 100, but it is by no means safe. It is classed as a category one source, being described as, this source, if not safely managed or securely protected, would be likely to cause permanent injury to a person who handled it or who was otherwise in contact with it for more than a few minutes. It would probably be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period in the range of a few minutes to an hour. Now the truck's journey was going to be a long one, roughly 31 hours if driven non-stop. The destination is the Radioactive Waste Storage Center, located near the town of Santa Maria Maxalquio, Mexico State. In the early hours of the 2nd of December 2013, the two men in the truck pulled into the petrol station in Tapoyaco to get much needed rest. Two carjackers saw this as an opportunity to make some money. They attacked the driver and his assistant and stole the truck and its cargo. Okay calling this a heist gives the men a bit too much credit. The truck was stolen to be cut up for parts and whatever the cargo was would be a little extra payday bonus. On the same day as the theft, the two carjackers sold the truck and its cargo to a local scrap merchant. No questions were asked and after the crossing of some palms, the big metal teletherapy shielding was being evaluated for its scrap metal worth. Five workers at the time are on site and they begin dismantling the teletherapy head. Now this might sound a bit deja vu, well it's because scrap dealers acquiring and cutting up radioactive material shielding is an all too common event and definitely too common for my liking. Soon enough these five workers began to exhibit the telltale signs of radiation sickness. For whatever reason one of the men took parts of the source head as well as the cobalt 60 and dumped them in a nearby field on the 3rd of December. A local resident saw this and went to investigate. He found a long cylindrical metal piece. It was warm to the touch and very heavy. The resident lifted it onto his shoulder and moved it approximately 15 meters from the dump site and hid it. Meanwhile official search efforts were well underway. The search. The driver and his assistant reported the theft around 8am on the 2nd of December. This set off a chain reaction with the Federal Police and the Committee on International Disarmament, Terrorism and Security who were also informed. The next day source search activities began with 4 teams equipped with radiation monitoring equipment. They were dispatched to search an area of roughly 5km around from where the truck was stolen. On the 5th the search radius was expanded to 10km and sightings of the stolen truck were reported in Huey Pogstallar municipality. While searching the area Federal Police officers were approached by a local resident who claimed to have a mysterious piece of metal in his backyard. This turned out to be the empty tele-therapy head shielding. The police detected slightly elevated radiation levels around the resident's house but frustratingly no source. Just under a kilometre to the east radiation monitoring equipment detected proper elevated levels in an uninhabited field. The National Nuclear Safety and Safegirls Commission dispatched a team to the site of the high radiation levels. They advised the police to establish a 1km exclusion zone around the source. It was now time to try and recover that cobalt 60. Even though they knew the source must be in the field they couldn't actually see it. This is because it had been hidden earlier by a local resident. But dosimeters gave a rough idea of where it was. Two perimeters were established where the radiation levels were at 100 microcverts an hour and 500 millisieverts an hour. But although a good headway had been made, night enveloped the area hindering recovery they would have to wait until the next day. On the 5th of December teams from the Police, Nuclear Safety Commission, Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant and the Navy searched the area carefully marking off sections that did not have high radiation levels. This was in order to narrow down the source without risking the health of the search parties. Towards the end of the day and with a pretty well surveyed area an action plan was conceived to recover the source. On the 6th the approximate location was found but it looked like the source was hidden under some straw. Unsurprisingly this would cause more delay to recovery as the source had to be clear. Completely clear. You don't want to try picking up a source unless you know it's all there. Just look at the headache that Goyana caused with its open source container. At least by now they had a reasonable idea of how big of a transport container they would need to get to the source, the straw and crops needed to be removed and this would require a robot. The resident who had told them about the scrap metal in his garden turned out to be the same guy who had hidden the source. On the 7th of December he told the police the exact location and finally they had confirmed where that source actually was. It would take however another two days of the robot clearing the crops and finally on the 9th of December the source container was visible and thankfully not damaged. Now how to recover the source? Well that robot which was doing the crop clearing would turn out to be even more useful. On the 10th of December using the robots onboard camera operators were able to finally recover the source after two attempts. It was placed inside a newly fabricated container and once the lid was placed over it radiation levels returned to below IAEA recommended safe recordings. After the best part of the week the source was back on a truck being transported to a secure facility. But what of those who had been all too close to the source? Well the scrapyard workers weren't hard to find. The five men were arrested and taken to hospital in Pachua for treatment. The two carjackers were arrested sometime later. All seven men were charged on the 1st of February 2014 with organised crime of vehicle theft. Theft of a vehicle, dismantling of a stolen motor vehicle, reception of a stolen motor vehicle, theft of a tele-therapy unit head and cobalt 60 source and abandonment of radioactive substances. Now the whole incident highlights the risks of radioactive material transportation and storage. Mexico isn't unique as there have been several cases of orphaned sources throughout the world due to theft. Funnily if the carjackers had targeted almost any other vehicle they would likely have gotten away with their crime. The event did result in Mexican authorities learning how to improve security and search operations. Right so this week's subject I'm going to rate it an O balls and a 3 on my legacy scale due to the legacy being relatively localised. If you want to find out more as always check out the IAEA report in the description as it acted as the framework and primary source for this video. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me John and are currently not wet but windy corner of southern London UK. 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