RE: Rad Safety Training - HazMat Team

["Neil, David M" <neildm@id.doe.gov>]

A couple of how-not-to's from personal experience:

During some drydock work on a large Navy ship, I was performing surveys in
the drydock among a "forest" of support blocks. As I started out of the
area, I was surprised to find a radiography boundary in my path - with me on
the inside of it!  When the radiographer returned from his check of the
area, he was even more surprised. Seems he had strung the barrier around me
and we had unwittingly been playing hide and seek for several minutes. Since
I had been carrying an operating gamma instrument the whole time, and the
shot hadn't started, it was no problem, but it could easily have come out
otherwise.

On another occasion, I was covering some work involving extensive
(expensive) entry requirements. When not actually surveying the work area, I
moved to what the status board indicated as a lower radiation area. My meter
confirmed this.  However, I noticed my pocket dosimeter reading rising
steadily.  As several of the dosimeters at the worksite were known to be
"drifters", I was not overly concerned, and did not stop the job, but just
maintained a careful watch on the reading.  When the reading began to
approach a critical level, I shut things down and exited. My TLD reading
confirmed the value from the pocket unit. I was not over any limits, but I
was within "spitting distance" of them.  Investigation revealed that some
shielding had slipped enough to create a small streamer placed just right to
hit my dosimetry set when I was in the "lower rad" area, but not affect the
meter a short distance away.  The moral of the story? ASSUME NOTHING!

Dave Neil
neildm@id.doe.gov

On Friday, August 20, 1999 7:26 PM, William V Lipton
[SMTP:liptonw@dteenergy.com] wrote:
> If this involves radiography, I remember reading about an incident where
> radiographers were working on a bridge.  There were also painters working
on
> the bridge who had not been notified of the radiography.  Either there was
no
> boundary or the painters ignored it, but they ended up painting the
radiography
> source!  I'm sure that I read about this, but I did not save the document
and
> have not been able to find it, again.

> > I'm updating rad safety training to be provided to our HazMat and
security
> > staff, and am looking for
> > new material.   
> >
> > Joe Greco
> > jgreco@kodak.com

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