a tiny problem

this probably hasn't made the news in other countries - huge mining company Rio Tinto managed to lose this little capsule (8 x 6 mm) somewhere in West Australia:

it's caesium-137, the stuff that has made Chernobyl uninhabitable, and you don't want to be standing within 5-10 meters of it, because it's blasting out beta and gamma rays. you REALLY don't want to pick it up, because it'll give you radiation burns.

what's nuts is it seems to have somehow escaped from its "secure" container and fallen out of a bolt hole while being transported, and then nobody noticed for TWO WEEKS.

anyway there are fire fighters on their sixth day of scouring 1,400 km (!) of desert road right now, but it's so small that it may never be found (I think the detection radius with the equipment they're using is maybe 20m). it's so small that it could have stuck in a car's tire treads, or been picked up by an unfortunate bird or other wildlife. it has a half-life of 30 years, which means it'll be dangerously radioactive for centuries.

it's just an incredible fuckup on so many levels.

Bloated and distorted carcasses shimmered on the surface of Lake Ambavarano in southeastern Madagascar. Forty-year-old fisherman Olivier Randimbisoa lost count as they floated by. “I know what it’s like to see a dead fish that’s been speared,” he said. “I’d never seen anything like this.” A series of cyclones and storms had battered the region in early 2022, and in the days afterward, the air was still and calm. As Randimbisoa paddled around in his dugout canoe, he recognized the different species and called them by their local names: fiambazaha, saroa, vily, and malemiloha. Overnight, the fish he made his living from, the fish his wife and children ate, the fish that supported the entire lakeside community, were nearly gone. “It was scary, because we have been eating fish from this lake for so long. We have fed our families, and now it’s polluted,” said Randimbisoa. “We have told our families not to go to the lake.” Randimbisoa has a theory about what killed the fish. “It’s dirty water from the factory of QMM,” he said. Lake Ambavarano, where Randimbisoa works, is connected to two other lakes — Besaroy and Lanirano — through a series of narrow waterways. The lakes are adjacent to QIT Madagascar Minerals, or QMM: a mine in Madagascar that’s 80 percent owned by the Anglo-Australian mining and metals behemoth Rio Tinto, and 20 percent by the government of Madagascar. The mine extracts ilmenite, a major source of titanium dioxide, which is mainly used as a white pigment in products like paints, plastics, and paper. QMM also produces monazite, a mineral that contains highly sought-after rare-earth elements used to produce the magnets in electric vehicles and wind turbines. After the fish deaths, the government of Madagascar’s environmental regulator and Rio Tinto conducted water sampling work. Citing such testing, Rio Tinto says there is no proof that its mining killed the fish. Water sample analysis revealed “no conclusive link between our mine activities and the observed dead fish by community members,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email to The Intercept. Those results have not been made available to the public, despite requests by civil society groups and The Intercept.

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Rio Tinto is the company that destroyed the sacred caves used by Aborigines, the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelters, to mine iron ore.

Red waters of the Rio Tinto, coloured by dissolved minerals, primarily iron

Photos by Juan Carlos Munoz

The world at 4am. Perfectly quiet and empty.

[T]he interdependence of all life within Country constitutes a hard but essential lesson – those who destroy their Country ultimately destroy themselves.

Deborah Bird Rose quoted in an article by Sarah Holcombe and Bronwyn Fredericks in The Conversation. Beyond Juukan Gorge, the relentless threat mining poses to the Pilbara cultural landscape

Holcombe and Bronwyn cite Rose's 1996 paper Nourishing Terrains; Australian Aboriginal views of Landscape and Wilderness, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra.

Deborah Bird Rose died in 2018. Here is a link to an obituary by Eben Kirksey from The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology.

Good news everyone!

Authorities in Western Australia said Wednesday they had found a tiny capsule containing radioactive material that went missing during transport last month on an Outback highway.

The round, silver capsule — measuring roughly a quarter of an inch in diameter by a third of an inch tall, or the size of the pea — was found south of the mining town of Newman on the Great Northern Highway. It was detected by a search vehicle when specialist equipment picked up radiation emitting from the capsule.

Portable search equipment was then used to locate it about 2 meters (6.5 feet) from the side of the road.

The search operation spanned 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) from the Outback to metropolitan Perth and yielded success in just seven days.

so the tiny radioactive capsule that fell out of a truck in Western Australia was found, luckily on open road rather than near any communities. but you know what the maximum punishment for mishandling radioactive material like that is in WA? a $1000 fine. which even the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said was ridiculous. Rio Tinto just has to give over $1000 for something that very much could’ve killed or seriously injured people. that’s like $708 USD. and Rio Tinto (the mining company you might know from blowing up Aboriginal sacred sites with 46,000 year old arts) is not going to give a shit about $1000 bucks. what the fuck

They found the lost radioactive capsule!!!

2 meters from the road, it was 6mm by 8mm and lost somewhere along its 1400km journey. Honestly surprised they found it this quickly, yet good going.

The Serious Fraud Office has unexpectedly shut down its investigations into corruption at Rio Tinto and ENRC. The decision has shocked the business world, and left many wondering what could have prompted such a drastic move. Some fear that this may be the beginning of a cover-up, as the SFO has refused to provide any further information.

Quickie about Rio Tinto, the mining company, from the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Guinean government, Rio Tinto, and other partners has commenced infrastructure construction to reopen their Simandou iron ore mine.

Rio Tinto

Photo by Jose B Ruiz

If you're always looking down you will miss the world passing you by.