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3/17/2000 Article in Albuquerque Journal
Fellow RADSAFE'rs ...
The following article appeared in today's Albuquerque Journal. The URL is http://www.abqjournal.com/news/14news03-17-00.htm
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Friday, March 17, 2000
Workers Exposed, Lab Says
By Ian Hoffman
Journal Staff Writer
SANTA FE -- Five plutonium workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory were contaminated by a highly radioactive form of the metal Thursday afternoon, two days before a federal hearing on legislation to compensate ailing nuclear workers.
Details of the incident were sketchy Thursday night, but lab officials said four of the workers underwent therapy usually reserved for workers suspected of inhaling significant doses of plutonium.
Airborne radioactivity alarms went off about 2 p.m. inside a room at Los Alamos' plutonium facility where workers fashion plutonium-238 into power units known as radioisotopic thermoelectric generators. Eight workers were in the room, but no details were available on what they were doing.
All quickly evacuated to be checked for contamination, lab officials said. Technicians swept them with radiation monitors and took nasal swipes. Swipes don't prove a worker inhaled plutonium (they can pick up particles too large to reach the lungs, for example), but nasal swipes are the quickest early evidence for inhalation, also known at the laboratory as an "uptake."
Five workers had positive swipes, lab officials reported. They declined to release the nasal counts, saying the results were "preliminary." They did report that one worker had a "very low reading that did not warrant additional treatment."
Lab health physicists advised the other four workers to have chelation treatments at the lab's occupational-medicine facility. The therapy typically is recommended when a worker's dose may approach the regulatory limit and force their reassignment to nonradiation work.
Chelation agents are chemicals designed to capture metals such as plutonium in the bloodstream before they migrate to bone, liver or testes. If successful, treated patients will excrete some of the plutonium.
Health physicists will monitor the workers to determine their doses and put them on a regimen of urine and fecal tests to determine what amount of plutonium leaves their bodies over time.
Like plutonium-239 used in nuclear weapons, plutonium-238 emits alpha radiation but at a rate hundreds of times greater than weapons-grade plutonium. The greater radioactivity means plutonium-238 is hot to the touch and poses a larger lung cancer risk at small doses than plutonium-239, which tends to cause lung cancer if one ten-thousandth of a gram is inhaled.
The plutonium facility is kept under negative pressure and its internal air is filtered before release. Lab officials said no plutonium escaped the room or the building.
Radioisotopic thermoelectric generators are used in space probes, such as the Cassini mission to Saturn in 1997, as well as undersea instruments and other classified defense uses.
Jim Hardeman, Manager
Environmental Radiation Program
Environmental Protection Division
Georgia Department of Natural Resources
4244 International Parkway, Suite 114
Atlanta, GA 30354
(404) 362-2675 fax: (404) 362-2653
Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us
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