Re: Transporting Wipes

[Kent Lambert <lambert@allegheny.edu>]

Roy A. Parker wrote:

>    This is an incorrect interpretation.  Applying the above approach one
>    could place  almost any  activity in  the  hole  of  a  large  enough
>    container such  that the total activity divided by the total mass was
>    below 2  nCi/g and  say that  it is  not radioactive material for the
>    purpose of transportation.

The allowable contamination on the outside of a package is 2200 dpm /
100 cm^2.  Assume a 20cm x 20cm x 20cm box, the surface area is 2400
cm^2 so the allowable activity is 53,800 dpm.  Or 0.0024 uCi.  A filter
paper wipe weighs about 0.01 g and I think one can argue that the
radioactive material is uniformly distributed on the wipe.  So the
specific activity is 0.24 uCi/g on the wipe.  So a wipe of a "clean"
package is radioactive (by 2 orders of magnitude!) and has to be
packaged in accordance with DOT regulations?  

--
Kent N. Lambert, CHP
mailto:lambert@allegheny.edu