Ahora que está en las noticias la pérdida de un satélite espía estadounidense, es un buen momento de mirar atrás hacia uno de los sucesos de este tipo que pudo en potencia tener un resultado desastroso: el del Cosmos 954, un satélite ruso que llevaba un reactor nuclear y que perdió el control en 1978, reentrando sobre Canadá y esparciendo material radiactivo sobre cientos de kilómetros de estepas heladas. En el portal Natural Resources Canada hay un extenso relato en primera persona de aquellos acontecimientos y la búsqueda de los restos radiactivos:
We looked at it with bated breath and then looked at each other, we were all familiar with the major peaks in the spectra from nuclear reactor isotopes and what was staring us in the face right there was the peak of one of them, Lanthanum-140. There could only be one explanation for the presence of that nuclear fission product on the frozen surface of Great Slave Lake, one of the most remote and desolate regions of North America. That single gamma-ray spectrum provided the incontrovertible proof-positive that Cosmos-954 had landed and that there was indeed cause to be concerned about radioactive debris along the impact trajectory.
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