NRC Inspection

[Mack Richard <MRICHARD@WPO.IUPUI.EDU>]

Along with a few others, I can vouch for the fact that the NRC is working
this week!!!  We just spent 3.5 days with them on a routine inspection (oh
well, we had nothing else to do - ha).  

As you might imagine, with the recent events at NIH and MIT, security is
now a big issue.  The inspectors went to about 50 of our research labs
and observed whether or not they we "challenged" when they entered a
lab alone.  As you might imagine, some people gave them weird looks but
didn't directly ask them why they were there.  How many graduate
students are going to ask someone in a suit what business they have in
the lab?!  They even enacted a couple of scenarios where they
pretended to remove something from a refrigerator when people weren't
in the immediate area and walked out of the lab.  He asked one of our rad
safety staff members how far she though he could get with the pretend
material - she responded, "Probably back to Chicago!!

None of this came as a surprise to either our staff or the NRC inspector. 
We are going to try to raise the awareness of our ram users regarding
security, but as most of you know, it's an uphill battle.  Any suggestions
out there??  We (and probably a lot of others) would like to here 'em.

Mack R.
mrichard@wpo.iupui.edu