FW: further info on Dorval Spill

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

A couple of sources who wish to remain anonymous confirmed the following:


<BEGIN QUOTE>
> The "spill" at Dorval was when an empty drum used to transport Mo-99, 
> that had radioactive labeling but was marked empty, fell and the lid came
> off.  There was depleted uranium inside that is used for gamma shielding.
> [Its not clear] if any of the DU actually came out of the container, but
> they did get a survey meter reading of about 0.125 mR/h [over a thousand
> times less than typical annual exposure due to natural background
> radiation].
> In any event, after the publicity of the MOX transport and the Japan U
> incident, the authorities at Dorval evacuated the building and called in
> emergency crews. The media heard about it and seemingly stirred up a lot
> of "interest". As far as [is known as of] yesterday afternoon, there did
> not appear to be any real problem with [any] contamination or significant
> exposures.
<END QUOTE>

Comment: the medical radioisotope Mo-99 is produced at AECL's NRU reactor at
Chalk River Laboratories, Ontario, and shipped to Nordion, near Ottawa, for
refinement and eventual world-wide distribution. Mo-99 is used in hospitals
as a source of the technetium isotope Tc-99m, which is used for a variety of
[often life-saving] diagnostic procedures...

Jaro
frantaj@aecl.ca
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