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Re: Criticality accident
Unfortunately, this accident was not the result of a single instance of violating
procedures, but was the culmination of long standing practices; see:
<http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Documents/Tokaimura/iaea-toac.pdf>
For example:
1. The licensing conditions for the facility stipulated a mass limit of 2.4 kg
of 16-20% enriched U in the conversion facility. When the accident was
initiated, they had poured 16 kg of this material into the precipitation tank.
2. The procedure modification that allowed the workers to bypass the buffer
column had been in place since November 1996, and had been implemented several
times before the accident occurred. It had never received approval from the
regulatory authorities.
The opinions expressed are strictly mine.
It's not about dose, it's about trust.
Curies forever.
Bill Lipton
liptonw@dteenergy.com
Paul lavely wrote:
> The last accident was very recent, September 1999 in Japan. The
> details of the accident and the deaths of the 2 workers was covered
> in detail on radsafe.
>
> Based on the accident in Japan it seems that those responsible for
> the safe handling/processing of these materials have not learned from
> the past. That is, the accident in Japan was not only one that should
> have been prevented, it was one that required the violation of
> procedures to cause.
>
> This does not seem to be a problem that has been solved.
>
> Paul Lavely <lavelyp@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
>
> >On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, BERNARD L COHEN wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> On Sat, 16 Mar 2002 RuthWeiner@AOL.COM wrote:
> >>
> >> >
> >> > There have been 22 such accidents since 1943, 21 of them in
> >>solution (liquid)
> >> > media.
> >> >
> >> > There have been 9 fatalities altogether (I think I remember this number
> >> > correctly).
> >>
> >> --How long has it been since the last fatal accident. I was under
> >> the impression that all of these accidents happened before about 1965. If
> >> so, that is important because it indicates that the problems have been
> > > solved.
>
> --
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