If you enjoy reading long prose articles, with plenty of human content, do not let the following tl;dr: spoil this article for you:
tl;dr:
A cylinder of cobalt, probably used in a medical instrument. Things like that are understandably very expensive to properly and legally dispose of. Somehow it ended up in a heap of scrap copper.
Well-written, long form articles are increasingly difficult to find in this day & age of Twitter-sized sound bites, even off the internet. It's nice to see that a publication billed as a sci/tech magazine is taking the time and effort to write them.
Thanks for this. I appreciate both the warning and the tl;dr. It's interesting and well written but I don't have the time right now to make my way through it.
originating in Saudi Arabia, the whole story sounds like a test run, done either by Al Qaeda or US DHS/CIA/etc.... (with neither coming out when the tab grew to $700K :)
Oh yes, I did enjoy reading that article. It was refreshing in today's world of 24-hour bite-sized news. All that trouble from such a little piece of radioactive cobalt. Imagine if some mad man decides to attach something like that to a cab in NYC. Just as stated in the article, it would cause a huge panic.
The capsule could have been from some industrial entity that should have protected the capsule until it was handed off to a recycler (one who knew what they were getting), but didn't (maybe to cut disposal costs, or by accident/laziness). Someone could then have sold the capsule to a Saudi Arabian scrapyard, and they packed it into a container to be melted down in Italy.
Another historical radiation incident caused by failure to protect a radiation source from scrap thieves:
If those thieves in the Goiania incident had just sold the the Cs source to a scrapyard immediately without breaking it open first, the two incidents might have been similar.
There was another incident 25-odd years ago near where I grew up on the US/Mexico border. Radioactive steel (with cesium or cobalt, from medical equipment, IIRC) was sold for scrap and turned into various things like restaurant tables. It was only discovered when a geiger counter was turned on by a bored geologist waiting for food.
"It was hardly the first fishy shipment to pass through Gioia Tauro. Famously, just six weeks after 9/11, workers there heard noises coming from inside a container being transshipped to Nova Scotia via Rotterdam. Inside, police found an Egyptian-born Canadian carrying a Canadian passport, a satellite phone, a cell phone, a laptop, cameras, maps, and security passes to airports in Canada, Thailand, and Egypt. The container’s interior was outfitted with a bed, a water supply, a heater, and a toilet. Nicknamed Container Bob, the man posted bail in Italian court and was never seen again."
While reading this I was thinking it would be interesting to see an infographic which showed the relative size/mass you would need of various isotopes to detect, say, 500 msv/hr in open air at a fixed distance. Since most people never see radioactive substances, it could be interesting to compare them visually.
In comparison to their long form story on the Stuxnet virus, which was really boosted by the personal element, this one reads mostly as a tease with no satisfying pay-off.
As a story trying to build a narrative it frequently concerns itself too much with the technical detail, or 'setting the scene', with little to no consideration for closing the personal elements it opens up throughout. It's littered with incidental detail but not a great deal of substance.
For example: what happened to Montagna? He's the first person to be mentioned, is described as doing something pretty dangerous, and is forgotten about.
It then ends on such a note as to trivialise the entire article. All of this is only a problem because the article was written in such a way to make it one.
Reminds me of a Daily Mail reports from February that an assistant port director in San Diego made a statement interpreted to mean that dirty bombs have been found shipped to, and within, the United States.
How can the number "307703" uniquely identify a container owned by a company that "owns more than 2.4 million boxes just like it"? (SSCC-18 codes are all-numeric.)
Like with barcodes, they just allocate more top-level identifiers as part of the company G1 code. For eg. Textainer are also CLHU, AMFU, GAEU, WCIU, XINU, AMZU, GATU, etc. amongst many others.
That is why they also color-code the containers and put their logos on them.
The code is ISO 6346[1] and was defined a long, long time ago and didn't scale very well (or you could say that is scaled perfectly well - nobody imagined that 5-6 companies would control most of shipping). The container ID part, ie. the '22G1', that the article mentions actually isn't part of the ISO code and is usually printed below the ISO code. So the container needs to be identified between the top-level company ID and the 6-digit container ID, hence lots of top-level ID's for the big companies.
The whole topic of containerization and how the world came to agree on standards is interesting and has a parallel in web standards[3]. You can ship a container from Canada to Niger and know that when it gets off a ship they will have a crane to pick it up, a barcode to scan and lookup its contents, the right power plugs to power it if it is refrigerated, a way to identify the destination, owner, etc. Fascinating stuff.
You only strictly need to use code for transhipping containers on another carrier - if you own the container and the ship you don't need to label it - although it causes no end of problems if you don't!
What tends to happen is that an 'owner' will have multiple owner codes for different subsidiaries or companies they have taken over/merged.
The containers also have a lifetime of 10-20years so presumably you can reuse numbers of containers that have been lost or scrapped.
They never mention the intended destination. I am sure the intended recipient was investigated and all but it's a curious detail to omit in an otherwise, very thorough article.
As maaku and castewart point out: I just missed it.
307703’s load was bound for a foundry called Sigimet
in the town of Pozzolo Formigaro, 40 miles north of Genoa.
I think I was thrown off with all of the talk about US policy, DHS, 9/11:
So after 10 years and more than $1 billion spent on
scanners, radiation detectors, and beefed-up intelligence,
most US ports are still scanning containers onshore, after unloading.
I still don't get the connection here. It seems they are implying we need tighter security to avoid this happening in this US. Instead, I inferred that this container was heading here. Oops.
I love the bureaucracy. Not a plight against Italians, most would be the same, but "Woah, this is more radioactive than Fukushima and none of us will go within 250 yards of it!" - 12 months, $700,000 later, government and port authority decide it's probably worth opening up. Good job, everyone!
I'm a BI Developer for a big logistics company and I immediately hit up our data warehouse to see if we had ever moved this container. Alas, we hadn't. Only it's near relatives. :)
Someone needs to make a for-pay service that lets me submit quality long form articles like this and get back a (quality) audio file that I can listen to on my commute home.
This struck me as security which makes you feel safe aot security that makes you safe.
“The radiation portals that were deployed in the aftermath of 9/11 are essentially fine, except for three problems: They won’t find a nuclear bomb, they won’t find highly enriched uranium, and they won’t find a shielded dirty bomb,” says Stephen Flynn, a terrorism expert and president of the Center for National Policy. “Other than that, they’re great pieces of equipment.”
How can someone just dump a highly radioactive (at short distances) source in a scrap yard? Gee, some people... I bet the guy who did it is dead now. This reminds me of this list: http://listverse.com/2011/08/07/10-more-cases-of-deadly-radi... and how most people should never be trusted with something that can affect thousands of other people...
I am sure this was an interesting article. But I did NOT read the whole article. Let me reason that in a fair way. The internet has a plethora of interesting information. the style used here makes me spend 20 minutes on this article without knowing if what I find in the end would be worth my time.
I rather like a style where you get to the outcome soon( say in the first paragraph), and then get into more detail for those people who think that this article is relevant or interesting.
I remember reading an article on HN where there was a recommendation for a style of prose that might be useful in today's lifestyle.
The author recommended summarizing everything in the first paragraph, then having having a more detailed middle section ( few paragraphs), and then having even more detailed paragraphs in the end.
Depending on the interest level of the reader, if he stopped at the end of any paragraph, he would have still gotten the gist, only the finer details would be missing!
[+] [-] bh42222|14 years ago|reply
tl;dr:
A cylinder of cobalt, probably used in a medical instrument. Things like that are understandably very expensive to properly and legally dispose of. Somehow it ended up in a heap of scrap copper.
[+] [-] w1ntermute|14 years ago|reply
Well-written, long form articles are increasingly difficult to find in this day & age of Twitter-sized sound bites, even off the internet. It's nice to see that a publication billed as a sci/tech magazine is taking the time and effort to write them.
[+] [-] js2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markbao|14 years ago|reply
How expensive? From the article: $700,000 expensive. For a "pencil-like cylinder 9 inches long and a third of an inch in diameter." Wow.
EDIT: ah, I was mistaken. See child comment. My error.
[+] [-] pdenya|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VladRussian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsanchez1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runningdogx|14 years ago|reply
Another historical radiation incident caused by failure to protect a radiation source from scrap thieves:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiania_accident
If those thieves in the Goiania incident had just sold the the Cs source to a scrapyard immediately without breaking it open first, the two incidents might have been similar.
[+] [-] aristus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nrser|14 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiania_accident#Theft_of_the_s...
[+] [-] tectonic|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsanchez1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apaprocki|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charliepark|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FuzzyDunlop|14 years ago|reply
As a story trying to build a narrative it frequently concerns itself too much with the technical detail, or 'setting the scene', with little to no consideration for closing the personal elements it opens up throughout. It's littered with incidental detail but not a great deal of substance.
For example: what happened to Montagna? He's the first person to be mentioned, is described as doing something pretty dangerous, and is forgotten about.
It then ends on such a note as to trivialise the entire article. All of this is only a problem because the article was written in such a way to make it one.
[+] [-] jerrya|14 years ago|reply
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356645/A-weapon-mas...
[+] [-] CurtHagenlocher|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikcub|14 years ago|reply
That is why they also color-code the containers and put their logos on them.
The code is ISO 6346[1] and was defined a long, long time ago and didn't scale very well (or you could say that is scaled perfectly well - nobody imagined that 5-6 companies would control most of shipping). The container ID part, ie. the '22G1', that the article mentions actually isn't part of the ISO code and is usually printed below the ISO code. So the container needs to be identified between the top-level company ID and the 6-digit container ID, hence lots of top-level ID's for the big companies.
The whole topic of containerization and how the world came to agree on standards is interesting and has a parallel in web standards[3]. You can ship a container from Canada to Niger and know that when it gets off a ship they will have a crane to pick it up, a barcode to scan and lookup its contents, the right power plugs to power it if it is refrigerated, a way to identify the destination, owner, etc. Fascinating stuff.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_6346
[2] http://www.containerking.co.uk/buy-cabins/images/Shipping%20... <- see the '22G1' is printed below the ID
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization
[+] [-] Retric|14 years ago|reply
Worst case they just add another company code to handel the next million unventilated, 20-foot-long dry shipping container boxes.
[+] [-] rbanffy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] defectivemonk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cshesse|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ejames|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nobody31|14 years ago|reply
What tends to happen is that an 'owner' will have multiple owner codes for different subsidiaries or companies they have taken over/merged.
The containers also have a lifetime of 10-20years so presumably you can reuse numbers of containers that have been lost or scrapped.
[+] [-] thebigshane|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thebigshane|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] castewart|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maaku|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helipad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|14 years ago|reply
... and is contained in a steel box. This gave them time to decide what would be the proper course of action.
[+] [-] nobody31|14 years ago|reply
This container is emitting X, as long as we put Y tons of shielding around it and stay Z meters away it's safe.
Or we could just immediately rip it open and see what happens.
[+] [-] joejohnson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clintboxe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gravitronic|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitmage|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tallanvor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aw3c2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomeast|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c4urself|14 years ago|reply
“The radiation portals that were deployed in the aftermath of 9/11 are essentially fine, except for three problems: They won’t find a nuclear bomb, they won’t find highly enriched uranium, and they won’t find a shielded dirty bomb,” says Stephen Flynn, a terrorism expert and president of the Center for National Policy. “Other than that, they’re great pieces of equipment.”
[+] [-] yycom|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|14 years ago|reply
Better to do some than none.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] charliesome|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nobody31|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakeonthemove|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thewisedude|14 years ago|reply
I remember reading an article on HN where there was a recommendation for a style of prose that might be useful in today's lifestyle. The author recommended summarizing everything in the first paragraph, then having having a more detailed middle section ( few paragraphs), and then having even more detailed paragraphs in the end. Depending on the interest level of the reader, if he stopped at the end of any paragraph, he would have still gotten the gist, only the finer details would be missing!