Re: SL-1 accident

[mcnaught@lanl.gov (Mike McNaughton)]

A comparison of the emergency responses at SL-1 and Chernobyl raises some
interesting questions. Los Alamos is preparing Emergency Responder
training, so I would be grateful for comments on the following questions.

1. What training already exists for emergency response in radiation fields
~1000 rad/h?

2. Should the response at either SL-1 or Chernobyl have been different? I
know this is a hard question, and hindsight is too easy, but can anything
useful be learned from these incidents?

3. Specifically, at SL-1, it took 1.5 hours to locate the victims, one of
whom was still alive. Considering that the maximum dose to a fireman was
1.07 R, would it be fair to say that the response was on the cautious side?

4. Conversely, at Chernobyl, 6 firemen died of acute radiation sickness.
Would it be fair to say that the response should have been more cautious?

5. In the article in Health Physics vol 9 pages 177-186, on page 185 the
authors write "In the training of health physicists, one must tinker with
their brains and install "flip-flop" circuitry for a factor of 1,000
transition from routine operations to emergency response". Suppose I take
this literally and say: if the field is < 5 rad/h, radiation is irrelevant
to the emergency response; between 5 and 100 rad/h, keep your dose ALARA;
if the field is >100 rad/hr, make a plan. Is this helpful.

6. Item 5 should be qualified by emphasising that a measurement by a
trained fireman is subject to error; for example, there may be a mixed
field of betas, gammas, and neutrons; also, collapsing walls might change
the shielding; therefore the measurements made by a trained fireman may be
in error by as much as a factor of 10.

Thank you, mike

"Shlala gashle" (Zulu greeting, meaning "Stay safe")
mike (mcnaught@LANL.GOV)