RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Scrap dealer Devair Ferreira thought the metal container might make a nice ring for his wife. Their six-year-old daughter Leide thought she could smear the pretty, red-blue powder on her face and hands.
But they were playing with a hidden fire -- Cesium 137, a radioactive isotope made from Uranium found glowing inside a stolen radiotherapy machine. Ferreira even spread it around to his neighbors, as a gift.
In the worst known nuclear accident since the Soviet disaster at Chernobyl, Devair, Leide and 18 other people were hospitalized, some of them isolated in lead-shielded beds.
The tragedy last month in Goiania, 600 miles from Rio, revealed the downside of atomic materials' spread to less-developed countries, even one as advanced as Brazil.
The chain reaction of horse-and-buggy bungles surrounding the incident has acutely embarrassed a government whichboasts it will soon build a nuclear submarine and just last month proudly announced it had learned to enrich Uranium.
Initial federal police investigations showed:
-- Doctors abandoned an old radiotherapy machine when they moved premises. They argue the machine was impounded under a court order, but police opened an investigation for possible homicide charges.
-- Bureaucrats at the National Nuclear Energy Commission shirked their responsibility as watchdogs for all radiactive equipment. The Cesium machine was not inspected for at least five and possibly 10 years.
-- Two scavengers broke into the unguarded former hospital site. They lugged the machine to a junk yard and sold it for the equivalent of $30.
-- Scrap delaer Devair Ferreira could see something glowing inside. He whacked open the lead casing with a sledge hammer.
In an act of intended generosity, Ferreira sprinkled the glowing powder around his low-rent neighborhood. One man put it under the bed to light his room. Another carried it in his pocket.
Leide ate an egg sandwich with Cesium all over her hands. She was so radioactive that anyone who came close enough to talk to her would have received radiation equal to a chest x-ray each minute.
In a matter of days, the quarter-pound of powder spread around much of Goiania, a prosperous agricultural city of one million people.
'Inevitably, perhaps four of five of these victims will soon die, and it is a horrible death, with boils on the skin, hair falling out, and violent diarrhea,' said Prof. Jose Goldemberg, one of Brazil's leading nuclear physicists.
Dr. Luis Pinguelli Rosa, dean of post-graduate nuclear physics at Rios federal University, called it 'potentially the biggest radiation accident in the world in terms of immediate, serious, non-occupational victims.'
The Chernobyl atomic power station fire last year killed at least 30, mainly engineers and rescue workers connected with the plant. Hundreds of ordinary Russians may slowly develop cancer over the coming years, according to the experts.
Eight years ago at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island power station, 200,000 people were evacuated without a single death. Any ill-effects will be long-term.
But in Brazil, the lead coffins have already been ordered.
Ironically, the disaster came not from a high-tech power station with a potential to melt down and kill thousands, but from a discarded, out-of-date, Italian-made hospital appliance familiar to cancer patients the world over.
Radiation from its Cesium, or in more modern equipment Cobalt, is used to kill cancer cells. In tiny doses it helps save lives: in bigger quantities, it kills.
Scientists isolated eight radiactive sites and found above-average radiation in 243 of the 20,000 people examined. Tons of contaminated topsoil was scooped into steel drums and some houses will be demolished. Such efforts, however, did not diminish the general panic.
People worried about the swimming pool used by a contaminated 13-year-old boy, and the city drain system -- after one person reportedly flushed away her glowing powder. They wondered about coins and bills handled by irradiated scavengers.
President Jose Sarney toured carefully-selected areas of the city to try and dampen fears.
But many scientists said the government was chiefly to blame.
'This accident seriously questions our capacity to handle technology,' said Jose Lopes, president of the Brazilian Center for Physics Research. 'It makes make people inside and outside Brazil wonder about our notions of responsibility.' Among the failings: -- Lax government controls over deadly substances.
-- Badly-equipped and poorly-trained emergency teams.
-- Pharmacies slow to recognize classic symptoms of radiation sickness.
-- No special dumps for radioactive waste.
-- Poor public education. A recent poll showed 60 percent of the population may have no idea what a nuclear power station is.
Some of these problems stem from Brazil's halfway-there position as a developing nation. It might for example, have world-class technicians at a world-class computer center, guarded by an illiterate watchman who believes in the local equivalent of voodoo.
'Brazil enriches Uranium, but it has poor people,' said Lopes.
While this scenario holds for many developing nations, Brazil's case was worsened by the 1964-85 right-wing military regime, when even constructive criticism was often equated with communist opposition.
Thus the Brazil's nuclear energy commission became both operator of the nuclear program and watchdog for nuclear safety, conflicting roles which in most countries are split between two agencies.
In addition to coordinating the nuclear power program, with one station built and two under construction, and supposedly monitoring another half-dozen research reactors and 2,000-odd radiactive material sites around the country, the commission devoted time and money to a secret military program to enrich uranium.
Another chance for responsible surveillance was lost because Brazil refuses to sign the non-proliferation treaty. The government says it has no intention of building a bomb, but it argues the treaty hampers technological development in poor countries.
Non-government scientists repeatedly urged better safeguards. Their 1986 report to the Mines and Energy Ministry denounced 'serious failings in the control of radiation sources,' and called for an independent safety agency.
'Apparently authorities didn't take this seriously,' Lopes said.
Although the nuclear energy commission is headed by a civilian, Rex Nazare, it is still subordinated to the army ministry despite Brazil's return to democratic rule 2- years ago. Critics say that makes the commission less accountable, but Nazare says his agency is not to blame for the Goiania accident.
Army Minister Gen. Leonidas Pires Goncalves attributed the Goiania accident to a 'lack of education, because people aren't used to living with nuclear energy.'
'Just as no one can stop the sun rising, no one can stop Brazil advancing in nuclear research,' he said.
