some details on St. Lucie

["Michael G. Stabin" <michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu>]

I have some details about the St. Lucie exposures, from a colleague who

works there (Pete Bailey). He describes the exercise of the dose followup as

"MegaCalcs of FemtoDose", which I think describes a lot of HP work,

reminiscent of "Atom Man", pictured in an HP newsletter some years ago as a

little guy with a butterfly net chasing an individual radioactive atom.



(all comments with the ">" are from Mr. Bailey)



> There was no "release" of activity in the emergency planning sense.

> It all stayed in the containment . . .

>

> Within the containment, there was a task to clean the reactor head

> in preparation for visual inspection.

>

> The cleaning occurred 'down ' in the refueling cavity,

> about 40 feet below the operating deck.

>

> We knew the cleaning area could become 'airborne' ; that is,

> the cleaning process could move some of the radiactive material into the

> air.

>

> The people 'down there' doing the cleaning were wearing respirators, in

addition to

> the anit-contamination clothing, plastic 'rainsuits', boots, etc.

>

> People in other locations of the containment building were wearing

> the standard anti-contamination clothing.  Their jobs did not require

> respirators.  Most of the jobs were on the operating deck.

>

> The cleaning process generated more 'airborne'  than was anticipated.

>

> The 'airborne' activity was moved by fans ( for cooling equipment &

people )

> to many locations within the containment.

>

> Some , not all, of the 'other'  ( non-cleaning crew ) people inhaled some

of this

> cloud as the left the containment.

>

> I've been very ( very very ) involved with the dose assessment of the

> event.

>

> For all those people that had a measureable intake, the highest whole body

dose

> is about 21 millirem.  This is about 0.4% (four-tenths of one percent) of

the

> annual limit for radiation workers.



(Stabin's note) - applying the BERT concept, this highest value is

equivalent to the dose that these workers would have received in about 25

days of exposure to natural background radiation.





Michael G. Stabin, PhD, CHP

Assistant Professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences

Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences

Vanderbilt University

1161 21st Avenue South

Nashville, TN 37232-2675

Phone (615) 343-0068

Fax   (615) 322-3764

e-mail     michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu

internet   www.doseinfo-radar.com







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