The Latest Breaking News from Rio Tinto

Authorities in Australia aim to toughen up laws on the mishandling of radioactive material as a search for a hazardous capsule that a mining company lost in the Outback enters a seventh day.

SYDNEY: Mining giant Rio Tinto has lost a tiny, toxic radioactive widget in Western Australia, somewhere along on a 1,400 kilometre stretch of isolated highway through the arid Outback.

The silver capsule the size of a pea had been lost in transit last month on the Great Northern Highway in Western Australia. "We have essentially found the needle in the haystack," one official said.

A mining company dropped a tiny capsule of caesium-137 somewhere along an 870-mile stretch of Western Australia’s Great Northern Highway. The plan is to find it before someone gets hurt, Liam James reports

Australian authorities are mounting an extensive search for a tiny radioactive capsule believed to have fallen out of a road train - a truck with multiple trailers - that travelled 1,400 km (870 miles) in Western Australia. Here's what you need to know:

The painstaking search along a 1400km route in Western Australia for a missing radioactive capsule which fell off a truck is expected to take five days.

The item, which is 6 mm by 8 mm in size, may have been caught in the tires of passing vehicles and taken off track to where teams are searching.

The mining giant Rio Tinto has apologised after losing a radioactive capsule in Western Australia. The tiny object disappeared along a 1,400-kilometre route between a mining site and Perth. It could put any person within a 5-metre radius at risk. Local authorities have launched investigations to understand how the capsule…

The exposure risk was low, but it "could cause radiation burns or radiation sickness," authorities in Western Australia said.

On January 12 a truck pulled out of Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri iron ore mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and drove 1,400km south to Perth, arriving on January 16.

It has been five days since authorities found out a dangerous radioactive capsule was missing in Western Australia, but search efforts to find the tiny device across a 1,400 kilometre distance are ongoing.