It’d be interesting to know how much radiation this was, and what would have happened if someone just walked out there and grabbed it. Or put some double sided tape on the end of a stick.
Or, said another way, was shutting down a major freeway necessary for more than a few minutes?
From the writing it sounds like it was locating it was part of the need for the closure. They had to use a Geiger counter to find it.
How radioactive is that cesium pellet, if they're taking a picture like that?
It seemed like the outer casing was preserved, so the risk is probably miniscule considering the short amount of time it had to decompose into the environment. 93 grams of cesium was enough to cause the Goiânia accident in 1987 though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
Was there no signage on the container to indicate that it was radioactive?!