RE: Personal Contamination Goals

["Morgan, Ben" <ben.morgan@pgnmail.com>]

Question:

Greetings Radsafers.

I am working to establish a meaningful metric for the number of personal
skin and clothing contaminations at a facility.  I am leaning towards a
"personal contamination rate" (contaminations per man-hour worked in
radiologically controlled areas) per rather than just number of contams.
Questions:

1.  Any further suggestions or examples of a weighted tabulation based upon
total hours worked?

2.  What would an appropriate goal value be for an effective materials
control program?  Obviously, zero is a desirable goal, but rarely attained.
I am looking for a realistic benchmark based upon rates in well-maintained
programs.

Thanks and happy holidays!
Mike

Reply:

Mike,

In an effort to standardize personnel contamination event response and
reporting in the nuclear power industry, and match the level of response
to the severity of the event, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)
issued Technical Report TR-113039, "Guidelines for Industry Response to
Personnel Contaminants".

The report establishes the response, data recording, and trending
requirements for each of three action levels based on the activity level as
measured with a pancake G-M detector.

Action Level 1  	100 net cpm <= measured activity <= 5,000 net cpm;
decontaminate, enter basic info in log, review quarterly for trends and
improvement opportunities, information is for on-site use only

Action Level 2	5,000 ncpm < measured activity < 50,000 ncpm; decontaminate,
enter basic data in log, enter more detailed information in a record, track
number of events per 10,000 RWP-hours for year-to-date, this info may be
shared off-site

Action Level 3	>= 50,000 ncpm; decontaminate, enter basic data in log,
enter more detailed information in a record, perform a skin dose assessment,
investigate the event to determine cause and corrective actions, track
number
of events per 10,000 RWP-hours for year-to-date, this info may be shared
off-site

The report contains a discussion of the technical basis for the action
levels and samples of the log/record forms.

You can contact EPRI at 800-313-3774 or www.epri.com or, if your
organization is an EPRI member, you can download the report. 

As far as establishing a goal: I would pick a tracking mechanism, apply that
to your past performance, see what the trend is, and decide if that's good
enough. Set your goal accordingly.

Regards,

Ben

ben.morgan@pgnmail.com

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