“The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, this morning joined those disappointed to learn the maximum penalty for mishandling radioactive material in such a manner was $1,000.”
A caesium-137 capsule fell off a Rio Tinto truck somewhere along 1,400km of highway, and nobody reported it missing for more than a week. Searchers found it two metres from the road with a detector driving past at 70km/h. The state minister spent his press conference praising Rio Tinto for being “exceptional” about offering help. A mining giant that loses a radiation source faces a fine smaller than a used laptop.