A frantic hunt was undertaken on the evening of December 18th for a missing radioactive package which ‘failed’ to arrive at Madrid's Barajas Airport. Spain's Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) raised the alarm yesterday evening over the transport package with ‘four radioactive sources’ of ‘very dangerous’ Selenium-75. Local reports said the CSN had sent a team of inspectors to the airport to try to gain more information.
El Pais is a major Spanish media outlet. It reported that the CSN eventually located the package, and it was deactivated. It was not immediately revealed how the transport container with the radioactive package had gone missing in the first place.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) uses the following categories to cover the danger of a radioactive source:
Category 1
Personally extremely dangerous: This amount of radioactive material, if not safely managed or securely protected, would be likely to cause permanent injury to a person who handled it, or were otherwise in contact with it, for more than a few minutes. It would probably be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded material for a period of a few minutes to an hour. highly soluble in water.
Category 2
Personally very dangerous: This amount of radioactive material, if not safely managed or securely protected, could cause permanent injury to a person who handled it, or were otherwise in contact with it, for a short time (minutes to hours). It could possibly be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period of hours to days. water.
Category 3
Personally dangerous: This amount of radioactive material, if not safely managed or securely protected, could cause permanent injury to a person who handled it, or were otherwise in contact with it, for some hours. It could possibly be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period of days to weeks.
Category 4
Unlikely to be dangerous: It is very unlikely that anyone would be permanently injured by this amount of radioactive material. However, this amount of unshielded radioactive material, if not safely managed or securely protected, could possibly temporarily injure someone who handled it or were otherwise in contact with it, or who were close to it for a period of many weeks
Category 5
Not dangerous: No one could be permanently injured by this amount of radioactive material.
Before the package was recovered, CSN recommended that anyone who came across the package should avoid touching it and immediately alert the authorities. The package was rated as a Category 2 hazard from the categories listed above.
Selenium-75 is a radioactive isotope that has radiopharmaceutical uses. Selenium-75 sources are also utilized on offshore oil rigs and at power plants during outages.
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The CSN said in its first comments about the package scare, “The CSN has sent a team of three inspectors to Barajas Airport to find out more details about the incident and try to confirm whether the package has arrived at the airport. The CSN is in constant contact with the Community of Madrid.”
The radioactive material was housed in a B (U) container, model NE4C. It should have arrived at the cargo terminal at the airport.
The CSN noted that “All the radioactive sources are properly encapsulated and shielded to avoid radiation to the outside. The four radioactive sources are Category 2 on a scale of one to five established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
In February of this year, Barcelona Airport's Terminal One was partially sealed off after it was discovered that the outer packaging of a box containing medical material with radioactive substances had broken open. The damaged box was found in the hold of a Swiss Airline plane flying between Barcelona and Zurich.
Firefighters specializing in chemical hazards were dispatched to the scene. There were also special emergency responders, although no medical assistance was required.