Re: emergency responders -Reply -Reply

[Jim Hardeman <Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us>]

Al --

I used to joke until recently that I'd never
seen an intact gauge ... all the ones I dealt
with had been either (a) run over by some
sort of asphalt equipment or truck, or (b)
burned beyond recognition. I'm not sure of
the construction ... but I do know that the
lead got out of the shield housing ... and
after the temp dropped below the melting
point of lead, the guage housings were
"frozen" to the shelves in the cabinet in
which they were stored. If they were
welded, they weren't "lead tight", at least
not for liquid lead.

Bruce Bugg, you want to handle the
transport part of that question? 

Jim

>>> Al Tschaeche
<antatnsu@pacbell.net> 01/21/00 14:02
>>>
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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