Re: 82.7 rem extremity exposure

[Joel Baumbaugh <baumbaug@nosc.mil>]

        RADSAFERS...

        Bob and Sandy's comments bring to mind...

        I'm sure that many of you remember Stanley Watras - the field
engineer who kept tripping portal alarms at the Limerick nuclear plant
(Pennsylvania) in (I think) 1984. They only had a portal monitor for workers
"leaving" the plant (although there was [to anyone's knowledge] NO
radioactive material anywhere in the plant at that time - it was still under
construction!).  Stanley himself figured out that the mystery contamination
was from outside the plant (the radon [and progeny] in his house). I seem to
remember that something like 48% of the Pennsylvania homes surveyed in his
area (on the Reading Prong - a 2 million-year old granite formation
containing uranium stretches from Reading to Easton in Pennsylvania - into
New Jersey and the tip of New York) had amounts of radon greater than the
EPA's action level. 

        Hey, one of my thesis' was on Radon - at least I remembered this
much... I'll hunker down and duck now in case my gray cells have hiccuped
and I've gotten some facts wrong...

        

        Joel


..


        

At 10:54 AM 10/17/97 -0500, you wrote:
>At 09:19 AM 10/17/97 -0500, you wrote:
>>This points out the need not only to have an individual exit through 
>>a portal monitor, but also the need to enter the plant through a 
>>portal monitor. CATCH the problem BEFORE the individual enters your 
>>restricted area.
>
>I have to concur EMPHATICALLY with Sandy. Once a person enters your
>facility with contamination from elsewhere, the most you can hope for is
>that people will believe you when you claim that it isn't your fault. Keep
>those portal monitors tuned up and running at their best - they can do a
>lot to avoid this kind of incident. In my experience, most portal monitor
>alarms were on people entering, not leaving, the site.
>
>But one more point...   contamination inside a worker's shoe is the
>toughest kind to detect. Congratulations to Cook on detecting it so
>quickly. The attenuation of the radiation by the shoe material makes the
>radioactivity marginally detectable, where an alarm may occur but can't be
>reproduced in a recount. This often leads to releasing the individual
>assuming the alarm was spurious. It seems that Cook caught it at the first
>opportunity, which ain't easy.
>
>
>Bob Flood
>Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
>(415) 926-3793     bflood@slac.stanford.edu
>Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are mine alone.
>
>
>