Re[2]: Release of I-131 Patients

[steve.rima@DOEGJPO.COM (Steven Rima)]

     I too have had the fun of looking into a couple of sanitary landfill 
     alarms. I don't believe that we can lay this problem at the feet of 
     the NRC or any other regulatory agency, at least in most cases. Where 
     I've looked into alarms at landfills, the alarm setpoint was 
     arbitrarily set by the landfill (or the company that installed their 
     detection system), and not by any regulatory requirements. I've seen 
     the same thing at scrap metal yards. How many states have regulations 
     that even require such monitors, let alone mandate the alarm setpoint?
     
     No matter what the limits are, there will always be those who will 
     want their landfills to admit "no radioactive material", along with 
     the companies making and installing such instruments. I don't see this 
     particular problem going away no matter what contamination limits are 
     set by NRC. I see it getting worse as instrument manufacturers make 
     even more sensitive instruments that they push landfills to buy.
     
     Steven D. Rima, CHP, CSP
     Manager, Health Physics and Industrial Hygiene
     MACTEC-ERS, LLC
     steven.rima@doegjpo.com


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     Carol Marcus wrote:
     
     
Dear Mark and Radsafers:
     
The problem was not the patient who was released.  The problem is NRC's 
nonsensical requirements at power plants.  Fix those.
     
We had a related incident in Los Angeles at a sanitary landfill that had 
installed highly sensitive NaI(Tl) detectors.  We were picking up diapers 
and other remnants of nuclear medicine procedures.  One day Rad Health spent 
hours trying to locate the radioactive trash in a truck, and it turned out 
that the driver had had an NaI-123 thyroid scan and when he drove the truck 
past the detectors, he set them off. We fixed the problem.  We measured all 
trash with nuclear medicine contamination, and set the baseline of the 
detector at 10x background and stopped "discovering" this problem.  All was 
fine for years until a different agency took over, set the meter at 3x 
background, and this "problem" occurred again.
     
The problem is not the patients.  It is foolish regulators who set limits 
that are irrational, and cause all sorts of silly "problems" as a result. 
Today, we have portable spectrometers and can even relay spectrometry 
information to anyone with an identification program.  We could solve this 
"problem" with state-of-the-art technology and good scientific sense. 
Hello?  NRC?  Is anyone home?  Is this going to be the basis for the new 
solid waste regs, or is it going to be another negotiated settlement with 
antinuke hysterical liars?
     
Ciao, Carol
     
Carol S. Marcus, Ph.D., M.D.
<csmarcus@ucla.edu>
     
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