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Unsecured Labs



Dear Radsafers:
     The recent thread concerning security issues with radioactive
material being used in rooms that, for various reasons, cannot be
completely secured, has prompted me to bring up a concern of mine:
     There is a new "politically correct" architectural idea that
has gained favor here in California.  The idea is to save money
when building laboratories by eliminating all interior walls that
are not load bearing.  This results in a laboratory about the size
of a football field with each (fiercely independent) user assigned
a bench somewhere among all the other users with no partitions of
any sort dividing them.  This ridiculous (my opinion, obviously)
concept has been sold to users because it "promotes cooperation"
among various occupants of the building.  Several users have waxed
euphoric over this.  We'll see how long that lasts.  I suspect that
it will get old quickly.  In any case, we are stuck with a building
where investigators are piled in at random, some of which work with
radioactive materials and some of which are afraid of them.  How do
you secure this nightmare?
     Here are a few of the questions that, sooner or later, might
have to be resolved:
  1)  Do all occupants of the building have to have radiation
safety training since they are all in the same room with others
that are using radioactive materials?   Currently we have adopted
"no" as the (only workable) answer, but...
  2)  Is it permitted for a user to leave radioactive material out
in the open (e.g., for a long-duration experiment) when there is no
door to lock?  The door to the street can be locked so that Joe
Public cannot gain access, but what about Jane Investigator on the
bench 20 yards away?  Jane is a non-user and I find it hard to
distinguish her from Joe other than the fact that she is an
employee.
  3)  How do you enforce compliance with necessary rules when you
have no control over the potential violators?  You cannot suspend
a license and confiscate material from somebody that has neither.
  4)  An accident can now involve dozens of people rather than the
one or two that caused it.  How do you deal with that?
     So far the California regulators have adopted a sensible and
laudable approach:  Since the actual hazards are very minor due to
the small quantities involved they have not cited us for security
violations.  Never the less, I would like to know what to do if
this ever changes.  Have any Radsafers any experiences with
something like this that they would like to share?
**********************************************************************
William G. Nabor
University of California, Irvine
EH&S Office
Irvine, CA,  92697-2725
WGNABOR@UCI.EDU
mailto:wgnabor@uci.edu
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