Re: Exit Contamination Surveys

[Tony Hedges <loui19@vcomm.net>]

At 04:11 PM 6/21/96 -0500, you wrote:
>           I am looking for information from non-DOE 
>          facilities to see how the outside world does business with respect 
>          to contamination surveys of items released from Radiological
Buffer Areas.
>     
>          I am not aware of any nuclear facility (power plant or fuel cycle) 
>          that allows unconditional material release from an RBA without some 
>          sort of frisk.  Is this true at your facility?  If there are 
>          exceptions, I would like to get information describing the 
>          circumstances under which this is allowed and the basis used to 
>          justify this.
>     
>          Rey Bocanegra
>          DOE Technical Specialist
>          on Radiological Controls
>          U.S. Department of Energy
>          Richland Operations Office
>          Richland, WA
>
Rey,
    We frisk and smear everything leaving the RCA (Radiological Control Area
equivalent to RBA) even though the worker has assured us the tool was not in
a contaminated area.  Having just spent a couple months smearing & clearing
items during our outage, I have found fixed contamination and internal
contamination on tools and equipment that was "never" in a contaminated
area!  Even though we have a contaminated tool crib and areas and methods to
decon items, workers still think contamination is a minor detail we should
over look (until they take it home with them!).  The nuclear power industry
has had and continues to have problems controlling contaminated material.
My question to your contractors would be how they can assure the DOE that
100% of the contaminated material is controlled and stays inside controlled
areas without performing surveys at the RBA.  I don't know of anyone who can
do that.  For this to be successful, in fact for any facility to contol
contaminated material 100%, the worker has to motivated to control and use
the item properly to prevnt the spread of contamination.

Tony Hedges
RPT
loui19@vcomm.net