RE: Day/Night background change?

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 03:44 PM 6/11/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Bill's solution to the problem of natural products at power plants is a
>common solution to rid ourselves of 30-40 false alarms during the course
>of a day.  Rather that than have the plant staff begin to become
>complacent and believe that "all" alarms are due to natural products.
>

This is a very good statement of why the uniforms were changed. The nuc
power industry has pretty well abandoned polyester uniforms because of
noble gas decay products. The plants staffs got so used to the guard
uniform vs noble gas problem that the frisker booths came to be known among
non-HPs as "polyester detectors." The frequent alarms will eventually teach
a plant staff a level of disregard for frisker alarms, and that is
certainly worth avoiding.

I also used to teach the advanced rad workers classes and told every class
to avoid polyester clothing themselves and why. I hope they listened -
there's no future in wearing clothing that will attract radioactive material.


Bob Flood
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(415) 926-3793     bflood@slac.stanford.edu
Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are mine alone.