They didn’t accidentally throw a nuke plant into the iron smelter - it was parts of a broken X-ray machine which was sold as scrap from a company in Fort Worth, USA, to a company in Juarez, Mexico, which had broken open and spilled its radioactive cobalt core along the way. In 1983.
The real tragedy here isn’t in the hot iron table legs or rebar, but in the number of deaths and illnesses in Sinaloa state from the scattered cobalt - it had temporarily became a collectible substance due to its unusual appearance, before it was discovered how radioactive it was.
I’ve heard about this case, which was truly tragic, but ralph1241c seems to be describing a completely different occurrence, although one that I haven’t heard of.
I think you are right-I remember the details as follows:
A radiologist from the Mass general Hospital went to lunch at a Quincy Market restaurant. He wore his dosimeter, and on returning to the hospital, noticed that the dosimeter registered a massive amount of radiation exposure. The doctor reasoned that something outside the hospital was to blame. It was the cast-iton table, which was traced to the foundry in Mexicao. So it was radioactive cobalt? I remember reading that you could have gotten a dangerous dose from eating at that restaurant.
It was Cobalt-60 from a high gamma ray source, as I recall. I’ve used a Co-60 irradiator – the workers were all very careful around this thing, and regularly monitored any leakage with thermoluminescent counters (TLCs), just to be sure no oner was getting excess exposure. The idea of peopler playing with the Co-60 itself, without any shielding at all, makes me ill.
The Cobalt 60, like a lot of radioactive sources, glowed in the dark. Kids were playing with the stuff and putting it on things like it was harmless lumiscent material (which is no doubt what they thought it was). That’s the unusual appearance.
