I hate to break it to people, but radioactive materials are used for a lot of different things. Until we get a level and are able to calculate the activity, everything will be simply be conjecture. I worked on nuclear reactors and people who aren’t trained in depth in Radcon will call anything “High Radiation.” This doesn’t mean that they are. It could easily be nothing more significant that a moisture density gauge (typically in the 10s of mCi) that was used for work or was stolen. Lets not start panicking just yet.
It is useful to remember that a lot of these emergency responders are trained that if their friskers read greater than 100 counts above background, the call the police and wait for better trained personnel. You get 100 counts by holding a 500 pCi test source to the detector. 10 mCi on contact will make it go off the scale. And 10 mCi point source with a GM detector will read 10 mrem/hr at 1 m (and usually you can read down to at least 0.01 mrem/hr). It goes up inversely squared. If the source wasn’t properly shielded any radiation detector nearby would sense it and when they got close untrained personnel would panic (for example, it would read 160 mrem/hr at 2 inches on a detector that normally never gets above 0.1 mrem/hr).
“I hate to break it to people, but radioactive materials are used for a lot of different things.”
And they often come in boxes labeled with the DOT diamond, which if you take home and use for storage can seriously freak someone.
Information like that is a Good thing. Keep in mind Cops were on radiation alert this weekend and did their job. The fact that the driver took off running is not going to help.
psst, dont tell people their is a radioactive device in their smoke alarms.