I don't think anyone that has commented so far (or the article itself) really understands how problematic it really is. I don't either for sure, but it's a few 10s(?) of kgs of heavy metal. It's probably going to act like a rock in the glacier, eroding slowly over a long period of time. I don't know how much is problematic, but consider the concentration of naturally occurring Uranium as a point of comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_in_the_environment#Nat.... Even factoring in a few orders of magnitude for refined Plutonium vs. naturally occurring Uranium, it's still a relatively low concentration, and that assumes it erodes entirely and quickly, neither of which seems likely at all.
Are you sure this one was like that? I'd assume RTGs are a small enough market that they would be pretty much all be custom-made and tailored to the current requirements, and given this isn't a space probe and must be covertly transported by people on foot I would be surprised if they have the same amount of shielding/protection than the ones made for space.
Yes, this has happened many times with medical radioisotopes. People find them in a scrap yard, get amazed by the glowing blue powder, and leave a deadly trail of contamination until it's discovered what happened.
No, plutonium is nowhere near as dangerous as the medical stuff. The capsules out of a therapy unit can easily kill, Pu-238 and Pu-239 can't hurt you unless they get inside your body or unless you're cooked by the Pu-238.
Yes, ingesting plutonium can cause serious problems. I’m surprised that the Indian Government hasn’t commissioned an exhaustive, multi year search for this device. Maybe the snow is too deep? But I can’t see why one couldn’t carefully skewer into the snow, tessellate the whole mountain with such probes and see if it picks up any radioactivity.
Since the stuff could well have melted itself into the snow and ice very slowly, and might have moved laterally considerably, I guess you'd effectively have to skewer a giant, largely vertical glacier down to the rock below, with rocks of all sizes peppered in, using heavy machinery that doesn't exist yet, at high altitude where just surviving at all is a challenge, with lots of very extreme weather, avalanches, rockfall, crevasses, icefall... in a remote area that is hard to access in the first place. That's absolutely herculean. That would almost certainly cost lives. That would be ridiculously expensive. Chances are that Pu won't become a big issue during your term, and it's just one of what must be hundreds or thousands of gambles any Indian (or any other) government must be taking on issues that possibly might become huge liabilities with some small-ish likelihood. Meanwhile, launching such an endeavor because of a few kg of poison at the very end of the world, because it might somehow endanger 200 millions, that's going to be brutally tough. That's a danger that is very far from intuitive. There are legitimate reasons to argue against the endeavor being worth the cost. Probably not the hill PM Modi wants to die on.
Wouldn't thermal vision be better at finding it? Presumably the thing is hot (especially compared to ambient) and should be visible with some advanced thermal imaging solutions?
Indeed. Either this was some sort of fission device (utterly implausible, IMHO - where's the moderator, for just one thing), or the "wave of heat" mentioned in the article is, shall we say, embellishment.
It sounds like the device was being transported in pieces. Each piece would be warm. Assemble it and you have far more concentrated heat. RTGs also work on temperature differential--when operating there's going to be a system to eject that heat to get a maximum temperature gradient. I can easily picture something like a fan blowing air over a radiator to maximize the power output--and there's your "wave of heat".