RE: Radioisotopes in Medical Cardiac Testing

["LANNI, MARC" <MLANNI@entergy.com>]

Subject: Radioisotopes in Medical Cardiac Testing
I wish to ask the Nuclear Power plant people as well as others that work
with radioactive materials:




1) How do you handle personnel that have had a medical procedure involving
radioisotopes and need access to the radiation controlled area?
	We restrict their access to "no entry" unless they absolutely have
to enter for some "ops" reason. This usually does not happen as our
management
supports our restrictions. We have had numerous condition reports written
in the past since we procedurally require personnel to inform us of tests.
If we do have to allow access we will get a baseline count(PCM with a
printer)
and then count the person on the way out for comparison.

2) Are your people asked to ask if radioisotopes are involved in a
procedure?

   Yes...however, it seems that we have a few physicians that tell our
people that the treatment/test is not radioactive even when it is.

3) Does Management have any control regarding medical procedures involving
radioisotopes?

Management supports our procedure as they do understand the confusion and
extra work a person with a medical radionuclide treatment/test can cause.
We have experienced problems even outside the "rca" with barium and 
radioiodine treatments. A good example of this is the waste sludge
holding tanks at our treatment "septic" system. The human waste is sampled
by Chemistry, and without our input, they would be chasing the elavated
iodine levels forever. 

One other event comes to mind of the operator that has contact with his
other half before he comes to work. His other half had an iodine treatment
The operator was alarming our monitors when trying to exit our "rca"
and was found to be highly contaminated with the treatment nuclide. This can
put alot of people in some touchy situations so it is best to be very
careful and use the "privacy" approach in all of these cases. 

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