An alarm has been set off by A radiation monitor at 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 of 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 2 countries and expose over 4,000 people.
Unknowingly 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 familiar plot points: cobalt 60 and a scrap yard but it ramps up
the outcome to 11.
My name is John.
Welcome to plainly difficult and today I’m looking at the jaw dropping 1984 Ciudad Juárez
radiation incident.
Foreword
Lost source events aren’t unique hell we’ve even had one this year 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 a source become ill with unexplainable
sickness or burns if they have unknowingly touched it.
But what makes ciudad Juarez so unique is that it illustrates what can happen when a
source makes it into the production of other materiel.
Sure a similar event happened in Ukraine where a source was mixed into concrete but Juarez
had far further reaching ramifications.
Usually with these stories there is some level of criminality usually in the source being
stolen, but today our stories criminality starts with a radiation therapy unit illegally
purchased by a private medical company.
The machine was a Picker C-3000, it was purchased in 1977 by the Centro Médico de Especialidades,
a private hospital in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.
The machine had been illegally imported into the country without notifying the regulatory
authority, it's important they are informed as they then can track where these potentially
deadly machines are.
But they weren’t told, on top of this the machine with its some 6,000 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 c -3000, 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 teletherapy machine you don't know how to operate?
I know it’s a question we’ve all pondered at least once in our lives.
Take it out to dinner?
Put it on reception no… sadly…
They 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 Sotelo Alardín to sell the machine off for scrap.
On the 6th of December 1983.
I’m guessing Sotelo was unaware of the potentially lethal task he had been given because otherwise
his next few actions would be insane.
Sotelo dismantled the machine, splitting off all 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 about 1mm in diameter and length so tiny.
There is no way that he could have known , oh and this little spillage is just the tip of
the radioactive iceberg that is this disaster.
The truck and its radiotherapy machine cargo made its way to the Yonke Fenix,:in Ciudad
de Juárez.
The parts were sold, and the scrap merchant wasn’t informed of the deadly nature of
the material, how could they when the guy selling it clearly didn’t.
Usually this is where these stories come to an end, a few people get sick and the source
is discovered but not today.
Sotelo after selling the material to the junkyard set off to return home, don’t forget now
some of the pellets that had fallen out were still on 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 the side of the road for 40 days, we will come back to
the truck later on.
So You know what scrap merchants do?
Wel sell their scrap for melting into new metal products.
And that’s what happened to the cobalt 60 pellets they became mixed up with the scrap
metal and was sold to 3 foundries Aceros de Chihuahua foundry in Chihuahua, where it was
pressed into steel for rebar.
Falcon Products Company foundry in.Juarez, who made table pedestal castings,
And A third foundry in Torreon, Mexico, that cast valve bodies and electric motor parts
using contaminated steel.
The melting of the scrap steel didn’t spread the cobalt evenly creating hot spots of radioactivity.
The rebar and table bases containing the cobalt 60 by January 1984 had already been shipped
throughout Mexico and across the border in the US.
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.
Discovery
So in the intro section of the video I mentioned los alamos, but what I didn’t mention was
just how much of a case of pot luck it was.
A truck carrying rebar made by Achisa was traveling past los alamos on the 16th January
1984.
The driver turned his large flatbed truck carrying two bundles of rebar into the entrance
of the Meson Physics facility at Los Alamos.
The truck driver realizing that this was not where he needed 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, from
there the shipment was able to be traced back to Mexico at the Aceros de Chihuahua foundry.
On January 17 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 to be found contaminated with radiation, this was
5 truck loads, but hundred of tons had already reached the US.
With a potential international radiation event unfolding, all shipments of steel from Mexico
to the USA ceased.
Mexican authorities traced the metal back to the Phoenix junkyard and temporarily shut
it down for investigation, on the 20th January and recovered the First Co-60 pellet.
Investigations at the junkyard indicated that 6oCo must have been there at least since December
6, 1983, since a contaminated bill landing was dated 12/6/83.
The Mexican authorities ordered Aceros de Chihuahua (Achisa) 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 from pure co 60, but where had it come
from well… remember Vicente Sotelo Alardín and his broken down truck?
On January 26, 1984, Mexican authorities detected an abandoned truck emitting radiation levels
of up to a thousand roentgens per hour, probably not a surprise it was Sotelos.
Sotelo was tracked down and confirmed ownership as well as clarifying that he worked at the
Specialty Medical Center, which was 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 known, the scale of recovery and clean up was only just unfolding,
the truck for one was parked in the middle of a built up neighborhood, potentially exposing
countless people.
This required the truck to be craned out of the city.
Thousands of tons of rebar was contaminated and 33,000 table base parts had also been
made with radioactive steel.
Collaboration between the USA and Mexico allowed an international search to be undertaken,
this included sales information of steel products and the NRC assisting with radiological surveys
of Juarez, Mexico.
Mexican health officials reported that about.100 persons had received blood tests of which
three or four showed evidence of 100-450 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 contaminated rebar, scarily
they determined that 814 structures would need to be demolished and disposed of due
to 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 wasn't recovered, as well no
one could account for all the grains of co60.
As such the total human cost is impossible to tell, of the scrap yard workers, neighbors
and foundry workers that were tested some had chromosome damage and abnormal sperm or
diminished counts, countless more must have been exposed from the contaminated metal or
the abandoned truck, but it's impossible to know for sure.
Vicente Sotelo the truck owner was made the scapegoat, with his employers forcing him
to sign a confession that he stole the equipment, but it didn't hold up, he didn't illegally
import the teletherapy machine after all.
But how did he fare with the radiation, afterall he broke open the teletherapy unit well unsurprisingly
he experienced acute radiation syndrome, including burns, vomit and diarrhea, but he survived.
No-one was known to have died from the event, probably due to the exposure being for 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 is even more worrying was that it was only actually discovered because of a chance
wrong turn of a delivery truck, imagine what would have happened if it went undetected,
10s of thousands could have been in danger.
So ratings time, it's gotta be dumpster fire, but a 3 on the legacy scale as the disaster
has been relatively forgotten, maybe because of no immediate death toll, but regardless
I won't look at rebar the same
way ever again.
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2010/ML20106B466.pdf
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.901.6636&rep=rep1&type=pdf
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/16291981.pdf
https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/516624/Accidente_Co60_1984.pdf
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2010/ML20106B466.pdf