Experts warn of risk from 2,000 missing radioactive sources

While many are panicking over the risk of radioactivity from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power station spreading to China, mainland experts have warned that at least 2,000 missing civilian radioactive sources pose a more direct threat to public health.

The civilian radioactive sources - for a wide range of industrial and medical uses - required careful tracking, but some went missing because of lax management.

'No Chinese people have died in nuclear military or nuclear power plant accidents from 1954 to 2007, but in sectors applying civilian nuclear and radiation technologies, 10 were killed, 49 fell ill and 16 were burned in the same period,' Pan Ziqiang, from China National Nuclear Corp, told the Southern Weekly.

Between 1988 to 1998, more than 1,000 people were irradiated in 300-odd radioactive accidents, with at least 30 cases every year, the weekly cited Fan Shengan , a radiological expert from the Health Ministry, as saying. It said the accident rate in China was 40 times that in the United States in the 1990s.

Radioactive sources are used throughout the world for a variety of peaceful and productive purposes in industry, medicine, research and education, and in the military.

For example, cobalt-60, one of the sources, is used medically for radiation therapy as implants and as an external source of radiation exposure. It is used industrially in levelling gauges and to X-ray welding seams and other structural elements to detect flaws. It is also used for food irradiation, a sterilisation process.