Acerinox, was Re: Public info, risk perception and fear of nuclear

["Marco Caceci" <mcaceci@radal.com>]

Not much was ever told about that accident, but than again there was

probably not much to know.



According to our good friends at the Spanish Regulatory Agency (CSN.es),

that was a well managed case, though.

The radioactive cloud went out to sea, did a couple of turns to spare Ibiza

and the happy crowd there, and then turned up into France by a most devious

route.



It also coincided with a major release of toxic waste in a national park, so

that attention and money were diverted into providing relief to little birds

and unemployed seasonal workers.



By the time the alarm was given in Cadiz, I heard it said, the activity had

been so widely distributed (slag was partly recicled) as to make it

unreasonable to handle, hence the cost for cleaning that mess was zero.



50.000 men-hours looks realistic to me, its 20 men/years isn't it?



The only number I saw was an estimate that 3000 Ci Cs137 had been smelted.

Cannot remember the source of this news.



They were supposed to have a portal, and it seems it was out-of-order, but

sounded an alarm on a truck coming back.



Is it possible that if those noughty French hadn't spilled the beans nobody

would have noticed? And would that have been so bad after all?



Anyhow, there were no major panic scenes, nor protracted debate.



I checked on the cns.es website: no mention anywhere of the source strength,

they will invest some money into covering the dirt that was discharged into

a swamp with more (different) dirt, and they say they implemented better

controls, which has helped find a dozen or so moderately radioactive objects

in recycled metallic scrap. Good.



Marco



Dr Marco Caceci

Principal

LQC s.l.

Noorderbrink 26

2553 GB Den Haag

The Netherlands

Tel + 31 70 397 5653

http://radal.com









-----Original Message-----

From: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

[mailto:owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu]On Behalf Of J. J. Rozental

Sent: 12 March, 2002 15:28

To: BRISSON Nicolas; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu; pduport@uottawa.ca

Subject: Re: Public info, risk perception and fear of nuclear





Thank you for both information



As you have mentioned, once the network is totally independent from the

owner of the nuclear site, the credibility will be also important in terms

of public communication.

Such effectiveness can be demonstrated with the Incident of Acerinox. At the

end of May 1998 a Cs-137 source was melted accidentally in one of the

stainless steel production plant furnaces that the ACERINOX company has in

Cadiz (Spain), this activated alarm systems in southern France, the French

independent laboratory CRII-Rad (Commission de Recherche et d'Information

Independantes sur la Radioactivite) has detected high levels of

radioactivity coming from ashes of the factory of Acerinox and this was the

first indication of something was wrong. Even the Spanish Regulatory

Authority, Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear (CSN) didn't know at that moment.  I

have papers on this incident, however there is no mention that the first

detection was out of Spain, this detail came from the press, (besides France

also Italy,  Swissland and German have detected).

Inclusive Decontamination took 5 months, and 50.000 man-hours were necessary

to perform the whole work and approximately 2000 Ton of low level activity

wastes were produced in the decontamination, however there is no document

about the activity of the Cs-137 source.

If you have any other detail, please let us know, if possible



Jose Julio Rozental

joseroze@netvision.net.il

Israel











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