Authorities are now grappling with the daunting task of searching along the truck’s 1,400 kilometre (870 mile) journey from north of Newman – a small town in the remote Kimberley region – to a storage facility in the northeast suburbs of Perth – a distance longer than the length of Great Britain.
The task, while akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, is “not impossible” as searchers are equipped with radiation detectors, said Andrew Stuchbery who runs the department of Nuclear Physics & Accelerator Applications at the Australian National University.
“That’s like if you dangled a magnet over a haystack, it’s going to give you more of a chance,” he said.
“If the source just happened to be lying in the middle of the road you might get lucky…It’s quite radioactive so if you get close to it, it will stick out,” he said.
The gauge was picked up from Rio’s Gudai-Darri mine site on Jan. 12. When it was unpacked…
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