Radiography equipment. How much material are we talking about?
The alert notes that the industrial radiography unit contains 68.98 Curies of iridium-192.
If this radioactive Ir-192 source is removed from its shielding (which is then sold for scrap) the dose-equivalent rate to someone 2 feet away from the unshielded source is approximately 78 rem/hr. A person 0.5 feet away gets a dose-equivalent rate of over 1200 rem/hr. Radiation sickness can occur after an acute dose of around 100 rem. A lethal dose is approximately 600 rem, though it might take a week or so to painfully die.
Iridium-192 for cancer treatment, but toxic in quantity.
Cool. Will this be a Brazil incident all over again. You don’t want to crack that cell open and play with the high energy stuff in your neighborhood. It’ll kill ya good.
I believe the common fear for this kind of material is that bad actors could disperse the radioactive material into an area contaminating it. It will not make a nuclear explosion, but “sources” like this are considered adequate for a “dirty bomb”.
I recall prior stories like this where the thieves had little to no idea what they had stolen. I guess the radiation symbols are not universally understood? I would not want to be around it if they are trying to scrap it!