The Latest Breaking News from Rio Tinto

Authorities feared they could be searching for the potentially deadly devise for up to a year.

The miniscule capsule, which measures 8mm by 6mm, contains cauesium - which is commonly used in radiation gauges and emits dangerous emissions at the equivalent of undergoing 10 X-rays in an hour. It could cause skin burns and even cancer

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.