 An alarm has been set off by a radiation monitor in Los Alamos. Operators are frantically trying to find out how and where the radiation spike has come from but it's not from what you might think. Rather than something on the site at the world famous nuclear research laboratory getting out, the monitor has been triggered by a truck taking a wrong turn and driving in. Right now what no one knows is that they have uncovered a radiological incident that will cover two countries and expose over 4,000 people. Unknownly contaminated material made its way into multiple building sites in both the US and Mexico, showing how close we all are from unknowingly being exposed to radiation. Our story today has a few similar plot points, cobalt 60 and a scrapyard, but it ramps up the outcome to 11. My name is John, welcome to Plain and Difficult and today we're looking at the jaw-dropping 1984 Ciudad Juarez radiation incident. Forward. Lost source events aren't unique, hell we've even had one this year in 2023 in Australia. They aren't unique but they are usually discovered quickly in the grand scheme of things. This is because usually people in the vicinity of the source become ill with unexplainable sickness or burns if they have unknowingly touched it. But what makes the Ciudad Juarez so unique is that it illustrates what can happen when a source makes it into the production of other material. Sure a similar event happened in Ukraine where a source was mixed into concrete, but Juarez had far further reaching ramifications. Usually with these sorts of stories there is some level of criminality, usually the source being stolen, but today our story's criminality starts with a radiation therapy unit being illegally purchased by a private medical company. The machine was a Picker C3000, it was purchased in 1977 by the Central Medicine Private Hospital in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The machine had been illegally imported into the country without notifying the regulatory authority. It's important that they are informed as they can track where these potentially deadly machines are within the country. But they weren't told. On top of this the machine, with its 6000 cobalt 60 pellets, were shipped incorrectly with the source head still mounted. The heads pellets had a total radioactivity of 30 tbq, aka a ton of bad days. But there is a problem, the hospital has with their Picker C3000. No one knows how to use it, usually when these things are bought the legit way training for staff is offered. So what do you do with a tele therapy machine you don't know how to use? I know it's a question we've all pondered at least once in our lifetimes. Take it out to dinner? Put it on reception? No, well sadly they just put it into storage in an unguarded warehouse. But surprisingly for one of these stories it wasn't stolen, instead it sat there unused for a number of years, whilst the hospital tried and failed to find anyone who knew how to work it. Time to sell the scrap After nearly 6 years in storage, the hospital's maintenance manager instructed hospital employee Vicente Sotello Aladin to sell the machine off the scrap on the 6th December 1983. I'm guessing Sotello was unaware of the potentially lethal task he had been given, because otherwise his next few actions would have been insane. Sotello dismantled the machine, splitting off its valuable metals. In doing so removing the source head with its thousands of cobalt 60 pellets. He loaded up his truck and at this point he decided to drill into the source cylinder, spilling some of the pellets onto the truck bed. Just so you know these pellets are around 1mm in diameter and length, so are pretty tiny. Surely there's no way he could have known what they were. Oh and this little spillage is just the tip of the radioactive iceberg that is this disaster. The truck and its radiotherapy machine cargo make its way to the Yonky Phoenix scrapyard in Ciudad Cures. The parts were sold and the scrap merchant wasn't informed of the deadly nature of the material. How could have they been as the guy selling it clearly didn't either? Usually this is where these stories come to an end, a few people get sick and the source is discovered. But not today. Sotello after selling the material to the junkyard set off to return home. Don't forget now some of the pellets had fallen out and was still in the truck bed. In a cruel turn of fate his truck broke down on route home. The now immobile and unknowingly contaminated truck would sit in a side road for 40 days. We'll come back to this a little later on in the video. So you know what scrap merchants do right? Well they sell scrap for melting into new metal products. And that's exactly what happened to the cobalt 60 pellets. They became mixed up with the scrap metal and were sold to three foundries. Aceros de Chihuahua foundry where it was pressed into steel for rebar. Falcon products company foundry who made table pedestal castings. And a third foundry in Torreón, Mexico that cast valve bodies and electric motor parts using contaminated steel. The rebar and table bases containing the cobalt 60 by January 1984 had already been shipped throughout Mexico and across the border to the United States. Unknowingly the contaminated material passed through cities, countryside and towns. But it would be an accidental wrong turn that would cause the discovery of the radioactive material. So the intro section of this video I mentioned Los Anamos. But what I didn't mention was just how much of a case of pot luck it was. A truck carrying rebar made by Achaia was traveling past Los Anamos on the 16th of January 1984. The driver turned his large flatbed truck carrying two bundles of rebar into the entrance of the Mason Physics facility in Los Anamos. The truck driver realising that this was not where he was meant to be turned his vehicle around and drove for the exit. This involved driving over a radiation detector underneath a manhole cover. This detected a heightened radiation level. The truck was automatically photographed and was identified as belonging to the Smith pipe and steel company of Albuquerque. For there the shipment was able to be traced back to Mexico at the Aceros de Chihuahua foundry. On January the 17th the state of New Mexico informed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who then informed Mexico's National Commission on Nuclear Safety and Safeguards. It was also discovered that another shipment was at the border in El Paso, Texas and on the 18th after investigation was also found to be contaminated with radiation. This was five truckloads that hundreds of tons had already reached the US. With a potential international radiation event unfolding all shipments of steel from Mexico to the USA were seized. Mexican authorities traced the metal back to the Phoenix Yard and temporarily shut it down for investigation on the 20th of January and recovered the first Cobalt 60 pellet. Investigation at the junkyard indicated that Cobalt 60 must have been there since at least the 6th of December 1983 since the contaminated bill of landing was dated to the 6th of December. The Mexican authorities ordered Aceros de Chihuahua to suspend the distribution of manufactured rebar until it could be confirmed to be clear of any radioisotopes. Analysis of the contaminated metal showed it was pure Cobalt 60. Remember Vicente Sotelo Aladin and his broken down truck? On the 26th of January 1984, Mexican authorities detected an abandoned truck emitting radiation levels of up to a thousand Ronkens per hour. Probably not a surprise, it was Sotelos. Sotelo was tracked down and confirmed ownership, as well as clarifying that he had worked at the speciality medical centre, which was then contacted to ask what was the scrap metal they had sold off in December? Well, this was the missing piece. But although the origin was now known, the scale of the recovery and cleanup was only just unfolding. The truck, for one, was parked in the middle of a built up neighbourhood, potentially exposing countless people. This would require the truck to be craned out of the city. Thousands of tons of rebar was contaminated and 33,000 table bases had also been made with radioactive steel. Collaboration between the USA and Mexico allowed an international search to be undertaken. This included sharing of sales information of steel products and the NRC assisting with radiological surveys of Juarez in Mexico. Mexican health officials reported that around 100 persons have received blood tests, of which 3 or 4 showed evidence of between 100 and 450 rem whole body doses. For context, a whole body dose of 500 rem at once can be fatal. In both the USA and Mexico, the contaminated metal had to be traced, recovered and disposed of. But even as late as June, material was still missing. Roughly 2,360 tons of unused rebar was recovered. Mexican authorities visited over 17,000 buildings suspected to have been made with contaminated rebar. Scarily, they determined that 814 buildings would need to be demolished and disposed of due to the high levels of radiation. 90% of the rebar shipped to the USA was also recovered. This had come from 5 states. Aftermath Well, this story is a bit of an odd one. It's not really cut and dry finished, as 100% of the material was never recovered, as no one could have accounted for all of those grains of cobalt 60. As such, the total human cost is impossible to tell. Of the scrapyard workers, neighbours and foundry workers that were tested, some had Chroma's own damage, and others had abnormal sperm or diminished sperm counts. Countless more must have been exposed from the contaminated metal or that abandoned truck, but it's impossible to know for sure. Vicente Sotello, the truck owner, was made for scapegoat, with his employer forcing him to sign a confession that he stole the equipment. But this didn't hold up. He wasn't the one who illegally imported the tele-therapy machine in the first place after all. But how did he fare with the radiation? After all, he broke open the tele-therapy unit. Well unsurprisingly, he experienced acute radiation syndrome, including burns, vomiting and diarrhea. But amazingly, he survived. No one was known to have died directly from the event, probably due to the exposure being bought most over a long period of time. Scarily though, the event, as published by the New York Times in 1984, released radiation 100 times more intense than the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. What was even more worrying was that he was only actually discovered because of a chance wrong turn of a delivery truck. Imagine what would have happened if it went undetected. Tens of thousands of people could have been in danger. So ratings time, it's gotta be a dumpster fire. But a free on the legacy scale, as if a disaster has been relatively forgotten, maybe because of no immediate death toll. But regardless, I won't be able to look at Rebar the same way again. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed. Play different videos are produced by me, John, in the currently cold but sunny corner of London, UK. 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