A Korean firm’s employee has brought a ray of hope to the frantic search for a hazardous radioactive source reportedly gone missing for more than three months in southern Vietnam, as he claimed to have buried an object hopefully being the lost piece of equipment at a landfill.

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Tran Van Toan, who works for South Korean-invested Kbec Vina Co. Ltd., told authorities of Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province on Tuesday he had buried an object that looks like the lost radioactive source of steelmaker Pomina at one of the company’s dumps.

The piece of equipment, reported missing since late 2014, contains the synthetic radioactive Cobalt-60, which can cause cancer when exposed to human beings.

Upon receiving the tip-off, the province’s Department of Science and Technology and the Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety rushed to the household landfill of Kbec Vina, which operates in solid waste landfill construction, in Toc Tien Commune to look for the equipment.

Toan said he had found some locals collecting a white cylinder object with a diameter of around 15cm. The object is less than 50cm long, weighs around 7kg, and has a safety lock.

There is also “a yellow triangle” on the object’s side, Toan said, apparently referring to the ionizing radiation hazard symbol.

The man had local police and military officials inspect the object and eventually buried it after receiving no comment from them, he said.

The object is now lying about 10 meters underground with tons of garbage atop, which makes it impossible to be tracked by any radioactivity meter, Toan added.

The employee said the burial was done in May or June last year, which contradicts the time the radioactive source was reported missing from the Pomina plant.

The lost equipment was among five radioactive sources Pomina imported in 2010 to measure liquid steel levels at its steel casting plant, according to a company report.

The last time the equipment was confirmed to remain within the Pomina facility was late last year, when one of the production lines of the plant was out of order, and the radioactive source was removed and has not been handled by the steelmaker since.

Pomina only realized the radioactive source was gone in March when a new employee took charge at the company’s radioactive safety management department. The firm notified local authorities of the loss earlier this month.

The weight of the object Toan buried is also different from that of the lost radioactive source, according to Mai Thanh Quang, director of the Ba Ria-Vung Tau science department.

“The tip-off by Toan is valuable because his description matches what we are looking for,” Quang said. “However, there are differences in terms of the time of burial and the object’s weight.”

Quang said authorities will continue working with other relevant individuals, including scrap and trash collectors, to “look for more reliable information.”

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