Truck with dangerous radioactive waste stolen in Mexico

Mexican authorities scrambled Wednesday to find a truck containing "extremely dangerous" radioactive material used in medical treatment that was stolen by two gunmen two days ago, officials said. The white Volkswagen Worker truck was transporting a teletherapy device containing cobalt-60 when it was stolen Monday in the central Hidalgo state town of Tepojaco, near Mexico City, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Mexico's National Commission for Nuclear Safety and Safeguards (CNSNS) told Agence France Presse the medical equipment contained 60 grams of cobalt-60, a quantity which experts say could be enough to build a "dirty bomb" if it fell in the wrong hands. The driver told investigators that the gunmen approached him at a service station, tied him up and drove away with the truck, according to a text of the testimony shown by the Hidalgo state prosecutor's office. The manager of the Pemex service station, an hour's drive north of Mexico City, told AFP the driver appeared to have parked across the street to rest overnight. The radioactive material came from a hospital in the northwestern city of Tijuana and had been on its way to a storage center in the central state of Mexico. "At the time the truck was stolen, the source was properly shielded. However, the source could be extremely dangerous to a person if removed from the shielding, or if it was damaged," an IAEA statement said. The CNSNS released a picture of the steel-reinforced wood container and the radiotherapy equipment being lowered into it. The commission, which reported the theft to the IAEA, said the material posed no risk provided it was not broken or tampered with. A search was launched in six states and in Mexico City for the truck, which has an integrated crane, the CNSNS said. "Whoever has or finds the equipment is urged not to open or damage it, as in these cases it can cause severe health problems," it said. The Radioactive Waste Storage Center in Maquixco, Mexico state, is surrounded by a white fence topped with barbed wire, but no armed guards are visible outside, an AFP correspondent said. An official from the center said the truck driver had been waiting for the facility to open at 8:00 am on Tuesday to arrive. Mexico's drug cartels have diversified their illegal activities in recent years, stealing oil and minerals, but officials have not said who the cobalt-60 thieves might be. Experts have long warned about the risks posed by the large amounts of radioactive material held in hospitals, university campuses and factories, often with little or no security measures to prevent them being stolen. In an incident involving a teletherapy device in Thailand in 2000, 425 Curies -- the measure of radioactivity -- of cobalt-60 was sufficient to make 10 people very ill, three of whom died, according to the IAEA. The equipment stolen in Mexico contained nearly 3,000 Curies, CNSNS radiological security director Jaime Aguirre Gomez told AFP. Cobalt-60 is a radioactive isotope of the metallic element cobalt and the gamma rays it emits destroy tumors, but contact or just being near it can cause cancer if not properly handled and sealed. More worryingly, though, such material could in theory be put in a so-called "dirty bomb" -- an explosive device designed to spread the radioactive material over a wide area. The quantity stolen in Mexico is "sufficient" to make a dirty bomb, said Michelle Cann, an analyst at the Partnership for Global Security. "But the ultimate level of damage and contamination hinges on many factors," she said. Major international efforts have been made since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to prevent nuclear material falling into the wrong hands. U.S. President Barack Obama hosted a summit in 2010 on the subject, followed by another in Seoul last year. A third is planned in The Hague in March 2014. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said in July at a major nuclear security conference that many countries had taken effective measures but warned against a "false sense of security".