The following information was received from the State of
South Carolina via fax:
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SC DHEC) was notified on Monday, June 28, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. that a Humboldt Model 5001 B, SN 2508, portable moisture density gauge had been stolen from a job site storage unit in North Charleston, SC. The gauge contained 11 milliCuries maximum of Cesium 137 and 44 milliCuries maximum of Americium 241:Be. [An] F&ME employee, notified the SC DHEC that a gauge technician arrived for work Monday morning and discovered that the job site storage trailer had been broken into. [The site RSO] was notified immediately and he in turn called local police and fire department personnel. He also notified SC DHEC of the occurrence. The RSO indicated that the trailer had been secured on Friday evening (June 25) with the gauge locked in its storage container in the locked storage cabinet within the trailer. No work was performed over the weekend. The theft was discovered, as outlined above, early Monday morning. There were a few other items stolen as well - a GPS unit and a computer. An inventory was still underway at the time of this notification. The local police responders were made well aware of what type of gauge this was and were in the process of filling out the police report. The RSO was advised to fax the police report to SC DHEC once he obtained it.
THIS MATERIAL EVENT CONTAINS A "LESS THAN CAT 3" LEVEL OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL
Sources that are "Less than
IAEA Category 3 sources," are either sources that are very unlikely to cause permanent injury to individuals or contain a very small amount of radioactive material that would not cause any permanent injury. Some of these sources, such as
moisture density gauges or thickness
gauges that are Category 4, the amount of unshielded radioactive material, if not safely managed or securely protected, could possibly - although it is unlikely - temporarily injure someone who handled it or were otherwise in contact with it, or who were close to it for a period of many weeks. For additional information go to
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1227_web.pdf