![]() ![]() CNSNS also managed to recover all of the 30,000 contaminated table bases, in addition to about 90% of the thousand tons of contaminated rebar that had been exported to the United States. It visited over 17,000 buildings suspected to be built with contaminated rebar, and determined that 814 structures would need to be demolished due to unacceptable levels of radiation. ĬNSNS managed to recover 2,360 tons of unused rebar. Decontamination work was also carried out at the Achisa and Falcón foundries during this period, in addition to tracking shipments with contaminated rebar that had been dispatched to 17 Mexican states. Between February 8 and April 14, work was carried out to locate and isolate contaminated material in the Fénix junkyard. Aftermath Recovery and cleanup ĭecontamination began on January 20, 1984, two days after CNSNS was notified by U.S. It was estimated that the contaminated material had made its way into 30,000 table bases and 6,600 tons of rebar. Upon further investigation the CNSNS concluded that in addition to the Fénix junkyard, Achisa, and Falcón, three other companies had received contaminated material: Fundival in Gómez Palacio, Alumetales in Monterrey, and Duracero in San Luis Potosí. Having discovered the vehicle, CNSNS was able to track down Vicente Sotelo, who confirmed ownership and clarified that he worked at the Specialty Medical Center. Since the vehicle was in a densely populated area, it was towed by a crane to El Chamizal Park. On January 26, 1984, CNSNS personnel detected an abandoned truck emitting radiation levels of up to a thousand roentgens per hour. Mexican authorities also proceeded to close the junkyard. CNSNS confirmed a wide dispersion of radioactive material had occurred and ordered Achisa to suspend the distribution of manufactured rebar until it was verified that it was not contaminated. Local authorities realized that the rebar triggered the alert and notified Mexico's National Commission on Nuclear Safety and Safeguards (CNSNS) on January 18. ![]() The detector went on because a truck carrying rebar produced by Achisa had taken an accidental detour and passed through the entrance and exit gate of the laboratory's LAMPF technical area. state of New Mexico detected the presence of radioactivity in the vicinity. On January 16, 1984, a radiation detector at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S. It is estimated that these had already been exported to the United States and the interior of Mexico by January 1984. This radioactive scrap was sent to two foundries: Aceros de Chihuahua (Achisa), a construction rebar factory in the city of Chihuahua, and the maquiladora Falcón de Juárez, a manufacturer of table bases. The fine granules were attracted to the magnetic fields of the other electromagnetic cranes in the yard and eventually mixed in with other metals. Meanwhile, at the junkyard, the use of electromagnets for handling the scrap caused the cobalt-60 granules to spread throughout the yard. The truck, now contaminated by the cobalt-60, subsequently suffered a mechanical failure upon Sotelo's return from the junkyard and remained immobile near his home in Ciudad Juárez for 40 days. He then loaded the material into his truck, where he drilled into the cylinder, causing some cobalt-60 granules to spill into the bed of the vehicle. Sotelo had disassembled the head of the radioactive unit and extracted a cylinder containing the cobalt-60 source. Vicente Sotelo Alardín, then an employee of the medical center, dismantled the unit on December 6, 1983, to sell it as scrap metal at the Fénix junkyard at the request of the hospital's maintenance manager. The equipment was kept in storage for almost six years because the hospital lacked qualified personnel to operate it. In November 1977, the Centro Médico de Especialidades, a private hospital in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, purchased a Picker C-3000 radiotherapy unit containing approximately 6,000 cobalt-60 pellets of 2.6 GBq each, which had been introduced to Mexico without complying with current regulations. It is estimated that 4,000 people were exposed to radiation as a result of this incident. These were distributed in 17 Mexican states and several cities in the United States. The radioactive material, cobalt-60, ended up in a junkyard, where it was sold to foundries that inadvertently smelted it with other metals and produced about 6,000 tons of contaminated rebar. ![]() A radioactive contamination incident occurred in 1984 in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, originating from a radiation therapy unit illegally purchased by a private medical company and subsequently dismantled for lack of personnel to operate it. ![]()
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