Re: emergency responders -Reply

[Al Tschaeche <antatnsu@pacbell.net>]

Jim Hardeman wrote:

> Another incident, to augment the one
> which Bruce Bugg described earlier.
> Several years ago (on the day after
> Thanksgiving, as I recall) there was a fire
> at a building just outside Atlanta which
> housed, among other firms, a
> geotechnical engineering firm which used
> several moisture-density guages in their
> work.
>
> One of my staff reentered the building with
> FD personnel, located the devices and
> determined that the lead shielding had
> melted on all of them.

I thought density gauge shielding was lead in welded steel shells.  If this
were to be so, when the shields got hot, wouldn't the lead expand and burst
the shielding?  Is that what happened in this case?  If not, what was the
construction of the gauges?

This brings up another question.  We have all kinds of requirements for
packaging for transport of radioactive materials viv-a-vis fires.  Do we
have the same requirements for density gauges where the gauge is the
packaging for transport.  I remember seeing radiography sources in their
shields sitting in the back of a pickup truck driving down the road.  Are
those devices subject to DOT and NRC packaging requirements?  Who knows and
will tell?  Al Tschaeche antatnsu@pacbell.net
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