"Recycler detects radiation mistake"

[Pambo1@aol.com]

This article from the Huntsville Times was sent out on an email list for the Coalition for a Healthy Environment (CHE) as an example of why one of the members of CHE is opposed to recycle of volumetrically contaminated metal from the DOE K-25 Site:

Source:  http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/Aug2000/11-e35628.html
  
  
  Recycler detects radiation mistake 
  
  Fired safety officer cites incident as example of lax NASA procedures 
  
  08/11/00
  By MIKE SALINERO 
  Times Staff Writer 
  
  Earlier this year, a piece of equipment called a vacuum
  gauge was thrown into a scrap-metal recycling container
  at Marshall Space Flight Center. The part had a faded
  marking: radioactive.
  
  The gauge was later detected at a Huntsville recycling
  operation before it could be mixed with other metals and
  was returned to NASA.
  
  But such a mix-up could have cost the government
  hundreds of thousands of dollars in clean-up costs,
  according to Jim Bult, a former radiation safety officer at
  Marshall. Bult was fired from his job last week, and he
  says the firing came because he blew the whistle on lax
  safety practices such as those that allowed the
  radioactive material to escape the space center.
  
  Bult was an employee of AJT & Associates, a
  Florida-based contractor that handles engineering,
  construction management and support functions for
  NASA and other government agencies. An AJT
  company spokesman denied Bult's account of his firing,
  saying it was a personnel matter, and Bult's termination
  letter said he was insubordinate and went outside the
  chain of command.
  
  Marshall officials and managers at the metal recycling
  center this week confirmed that the radioactive material
  was mistakenly allowed to leave the space center. 
  
  ''I would say it was not serious,'' said Brian Ramsey, a
  NASA scientist who chairs Marshall's radiation safety
  committee. ''We caught it after it left the center and
  before anything was done with it.''
  
  Actually, the scrap metal dealers caught the mistake.
  The metal triggered a radiation detector at L. Miller and
  Son Scrap Metal on Triana Boulevard.
  
  ''They didn't catch it; we did,'' said Joel Denbo, chief
  manager for operations at Tennessee Recycling LLC,
  parent company of Miller and Son.
  
  A follow-up check with hand-held Geiger counters
  confirmed the radioactivity, said Sol Miller, chief
  manager for administration at Tennessee Recycling.
  
  ''We called NASA and asked them what to do,'' Miller
  said. ''They said their safety people said bring it back.
  We did. . . . It went back exactly like it came from
  NASA.''
  
  Miller said his company's detectors don't quantify the
  amount of radiation once they are triggered, but said his
  equipment can detect radiation levels as small as those
  emitted by a lighted mantle in a camping lantern. Denbo
  said some metals that have been recently X-rayed can
  also set off the detectors. Technicians at Marshall X-ray
  space parts for potential structural flaws.
  
  Miller, who said his company often buys scrap metal
  from NASA, said he remembers no other occasion
  when radiation detectors went off on scrap from any
  source.
  
  Denbo said he knows of only two occasions at his
  family's scrap yards. At least one of those times involved
  naturally occurring radioactivity, he said.
  
  NASA's Ramsey said the metal was a piece of
  decommissioned equipment that was being stored at
  Marshall.
  
  ''Radioactive sources used to be used widely on various
  equipment back when radiation was less of a concern
  than it is now,'' Ramsey said. The equipment did not
  appear on Marshall's license for radioactive material
  from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because of the
  equipment's age.
  
  Bult said he informed the radiation safety committee
  about the gauge and suggested corrective actions, which
  the board implemented.
  
  ''Marshall took good corrective action to keep it from
  happening again,'' Bult said.
  
  Ramsey said the safety committee considered the
  incident serious and put together a video presentation for
  employees on how to recognize radioactive material and
  how to report it to safety officers. The center also got
  new, sensitive equipment to monitor scrap metal before
  it leaves Marshall, Ramsey said
  
  ''We felt, while the piece of equipment posed no health
  hazard, if it got out, there might be another piece that
  could get out,'' Ramsey said.
  
  Although the radioactivity of the metal was not enough
  to cause a health hazard, it could have contaminated
  anything it was mixed with, according to Bult. That could
  have been an expensive problem.
  
  Before coming to work at Marshall, Bult said, he
  worked as a radiation and chemical safety officer in
  Kentucky. He worked on a case in Ashland, Ky., where
  radioactive material was inadvertently mixed in a
  foundry's scrap effluent control system.
  
  ''It's all hazardous waste, then you throw radioactive
  material in there and it becomes mixed waste,'' he said.
  ''It becomes extremely hard and extremely expensive to
  clean up. How would you like to be paying for several
  train loads (of mixed waste) at a couple of hundred
  dollars a cubic foot?''
  
  The vacuum gauge this year was apparently not the first
  radioactive item to be mixed with scrap at Marshall.
  
  About a year before the radioactive gauge was detected
  at the recycler, a small cylinder containing radioactive
  material was discovered by Marshall employees mixed
  in with scrap metal outside a building at the space
  center, according to a Marshall safety bulletin.
  
  ''Fortunately, in this case, there was no significant
  personnel hazard,'' the safety bulletin said.
  
  Times staff writer John Anderson contributed to this
  report.
  
  © 2000 The Huntsville Times. Used with permission
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