RE: give me your opinion

[Mike Dempsey <mdempsey@lanl.gov>]

1) This scenario is completely implausible, Joe knows it (or needs to know it).

2) WIPP Drums are not reactive, they are vented, the containers inside are
plastic bags or 5 gallon pails, there is nothing to build pressure and burst.

3) Nothing was mentioned about your buddy walks into a room and keels over,
you are in the same room with him. a APR will not supply O2 if it were
required.  SCBA is a lot longer response time than APR.  That not what he
asked.

3) Joe has never seen the inside of a WIPP Drum, it not like a bunch of
powder or something, the Pu is INVISIBLE to the naked eye.  The DOE does
not throw out perfectly good Pu.  Anything released would be on the order
of micro grams.

4) There are no waste packages like this.  I have worked with TRU waste
drums 30 years old.  Even then they were vented with no reactive,
explosives etc.  

My own opinion and experience.

Mike Dempsey

At 06:15 PM 1/25/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Imagine that your buddy walks ahead of you into a room, falls down and
>does not respond to your calls.  Do you a) rush in after him or b) call
>for help, look and think about what happened, then recover?  If you
>choose a, chances are very good that the buddy you walked ahead of will
>be faced with the same dilemma.
>
>Point is, in an industrial environment, the best course of action is to
>think about how the emergency happened first, communicate with and warn
>others, and then recover (though every situation is different -
>Consistency is usually the best course of action).  For the specific
>scenario, I would be willing to bet one whole penny that other dangers
>exist (above and beyond 16-80g of Pu) if a waste package pops with
>enough force to KO a worker.  
>
>Also, in the type of facility that has waste packages like this (and
>most others), 30 seconds up front can be used to prevent other delays
>(which will certainly dwarf the 30 seconds spent up front).  You could
>warn others in the area, get an ambulance started towards you, and get
>an announcement for first responders to get to the scene.  Consistent
>rapid response must involve thinking about the scenario up front (having
>drills often also helps).  This will give the patient a much greater
>chance of survival, and give you a lot fewer patients.  
>
>In just about every industry, this seems to be a dilemma.  See Oklahoma
>City (large scale) - it would have been very tragic if responders just
>went in and saved people.  It took a coordinated response and calm
>nerves to help all those folks.  Up in our area, several divers were
>killed because one jumped in after the other.  I can probably list off
>about 50 examples of situations where calm heads prevail and where
>heroism failed (though sometimes the heroes do come through). 
>
>I am definitely in agreement with the #2's.
>
>Robert A. Jones			Robert_A_Jones@rl.gov
>Health Physicist 			phone: (509)376-8528
>PFP Radiological Control 		fax: (509)373-4274
>Hanford, WA				Hanford Pager: 85-6559 
>
>
>	-----Original Message-----
>	From:	Archer, Joe [SMTP:archerj@wipp.carlsbad.nm.us]
>	Sent:	Monday, January 25, 1999 1:40 PM
>	To:	Multiple recipients of list
>	Subject:	give me your opinion
>
>	This is the scenario. A Pu-239 waste canister (Average content
>16 grams,
>	Max content 80 grams) burst open and knocks out a worker nearby.
>One
>	viewpoint is that a person should run to the workers side
>without
>	worrying about the potential airborne. A second viewpoint is
>that
>	respirators should be located in the immediate vicinity of the
>work area
>	and the attending person should take the 20-30 seconds required
>to don a
>	respirator before attending to the injured party. The crux of
>the issue
>	seems to be the weighted risk to the injured person of taking 30
>seconds
>	to get to the person versus the potential risk to the attending
>person.
>	The first viewpoint assumes a 30 second delay is a greater risk
>to a
>	person in need of CPR versus the risk of diving into the
>potential plume
>	of a freshly burst container. The second viewpoint argues the
>need to
>	weigh both risks and concludes that the potential airborne is a
>greater
>	risk than a 30 second delay in attending to the injured party. 
>
>	So what viewpoint do you side with, one or two.
>
>	Thanx,
>	Joe
>
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