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Re: Estimating doses from criticality accidents
Excuse-me, we are in a democratic forum, and we need to accept all honest
opinion, there is nothing offensive in yours or Professor's Cohen message,
just point of view.
Specifically about the Accident the IAEA sent a team to Japan, according
with the following IAEA Press Releases
PR 1999/15 (12 October 1999)
Fact-Finding Team of Experts from the International Atomic Energy
Agency Leaves Today for Japan
A team of three nuclear safety specialists from the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna is leaving today for
Japan to ascertain the facts relating to the September 30 criticality
accident at a fuel conversion facility in Tokaimura, following the Japanese
Government's announced acceptance of the IAEA's offer to send such a team.
Between October 13-15 the team will visit both Tokyo and
Tokaimura, where they will conduct their work and hold discussions. They
will return to Vienna over the weekend and prepare an internal report on
their findings. No public statements are planned while the team is engaged
in fulfilling its mission.
Consultations are underway on the separate question of a
possible review, within the framework of the IAEA, at a later stage of the
outcome of the overall investigation of the accident and the lessons to be
learned.
We have to be patient until the IAEA publish any official report.
However, taking into account the press information, about one month ago I
sent the following message to RADSAFE, which still is my point of view:
"A nation that has built a reputation for quality in high-tech manufacturing
should not have such workmanship errors, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said."
The head of the Science and Technology Agency warned of the "moral
disintegration among engineers" in Japan. Even officials of the nuclear
industry said there are morale problems among workers and mismanagement in
companies. These statements show in Japan lack of Safety Culture. The
degree only after a complete program for evaluation.
This accident of coarse will draw the attention of all responsible parties
in developing and developed countries to review if protection and safety are
in conformity with the relevant requirements of National and International
Standards. This should be done at any particular facility, component of
the nuclear fuel cycle, as well another installation where radioactive
materials are been used. The objective is to identify any latent weakness
in the installation and to implement corrective actions to eliminate the
latent weaknesses as well as to implement corrective actions to prevent
recurrence of the latent weakness.
I am looking into this accident considering two basic IAEA documents and
Safety Series that contain reported consequences and lessons learned due
Safety problems, direct causes and root causes. Basic Goal: to write a
paper on Responsible Parties and Safety Culture.
The two basic documents are:
a) The Safety of Nuclear Installations, IAEA Safety Series 110, 1993
b) Basic Safety Standards, IAEA Safety Series 115, 1996
For my understanding , considering topics from the press (some topics,
bellow) the responsible parties in the Japan Accident were:
a) Regulatory Authority
b) Licensee (Organization)
c) Workers
d) Radiation Safety Officer
e) Radiation Protection Officer
Only after the investigation of circumstances, it will possible to define
their level of responsibility and if any other party also will be involved.
TOPIC TO DISCUSS
1 - The accident happened when workers put too much uranium -- 35 pounds
instead of about 5.3 pounds;
2 - Makoto Morita, an executive with JCO Co., which operates the plant,
said that the workers manually bypassed part of the required procedure that
would have prevented them from using too much uranium. -- "We have no words
to express our apologies". "We cannot escape our responsibility"
3 - "The situation is one our country has never experienced", a government
spokesperson said;
4 - Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and
Environmental Research in Takoma Park, which studies nuclear problems
worldwide, called it a "very unusual accident" at a plant that is "badly
managed" and has a recent history of radiation exposure problems.
5 - "Our priority now is look into the cause of this very unfortunate
accident," Numata continued., "We have learned that our fail-safe mechanism
sometimes doesn't work -- perhaps due to the fallibility of human beings
-- but we are seriously looking into the causes now" -
Sadaaki Numata is a spokesman for the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
6 - The Japanese government admitted that it had moved too slowly to
respond to the incident. It did not hold its first emergency meeting until
10 hours after the incident occurred.
7 - "We lacked a more serious understanding of the situation of the
accident", said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka
8 - Numata blamed the government's slowness to respond, in part. on poor
communication between the plant operators and the government -- "There may
have been a series of unfortunate events taking place" , he said. "This
particular accident took place in a plant owned by a private enterprise, and
the communication channel between this private plant and the government
facility may not have worked as it should have. But once we learned the
seriousness of this accident, we engaged in a very intensive effort to
prevent the worst from happening"
9 - "This is what always happens in Japan -- they wait for an accident to
happen before doing anything", said one nuclear safety expert on NHK television.
10 - "You can't just blame this accident on workers. There are much more
fundamental problems that must be addressed."
11 - For at least the past two years , the uranium processing plant was the
site of Japan's worst nuclear accident had been using an illegal procedure
to handle the dangerous material because it was faster , an official of
the company operating the plant said today. - (October 3)
12 - Workers were following a company manual when they poured the uranium
mixture from a bucket into a settling tank on Thursday, the official said.
But this time the head of the three-man crew instructed his colleagues to
use a 35-pound capacity tank instead of a smaller one. As a result, the men
put enough uranium together to set off a chain reaction that could not
be stopped until 18 hours later.
13 - If they had used the government-approved process, the material would
have passed through a measuring cylinder that would have limited the amount
to well bellow the danger level;
14 - "From at least two years ago, we had an internal manual which we did
not present to the government and which called for using buckets," said a
JCO Co. official in Tokaimura, who asked not to be quoted by name. "We knew
the practice was illegal but it's faster."
15 - The workers were involved in processing 126 pounds of uranium for use
in an experimental breeder reactor program. The process was used
occasionally; two of the workers were inexperienced, but crew leader
Yutaka Yokokawa, 54, had done this work before, according to Yutake Tatsuta,
another company official.
16 - From his hospital bed, the supervisor admitted that a process had been
skipped," Tatsuta said.
17 - Among the unanswered questions is why the Tokio-based JCO Co. had no
contingency plans to deal with an accident. In a document given to
government regulators in 1983, the company maintained that "critical fission
chain reactions could not occur" at the plant, according to the Japanese
daily Yomiuri Shmbun
18 - Such assertions apparently were accepted by the government's Science
and Technology Agency, which licensed the plants and required minimal
safeguards, all on the assumptions that uranium would not be placed together
in quantities sufficient for a fission reaction.
19 - Chief cabinet secretary Hiromu Nonaka called the failures that led to
the accident "unthinkable" , and declared that "we must examine how nuclear
facilities are being managed"
20 - Kazuo Sato, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission said on Sunday
that the Commission would look into whether there had been lax supervision
by the central government
J. J. Rozental
josrozen@netmedia.net.il
At 08:42 PM 11/8/99 -0600, you wrote:
>May I offer an apology to the "list" for my
>inappropriate use of the word "tragic" ?
>
>If my attempt to learn from others more
>knowledgeable than myself about events
>that are not reported with great accuracy
>or detail in the news media is inappropriate
>in this forum, then I apologize and ask to
>be removed from the list before I offend
>others with my poorly phrased questions.
>
>Doug J.
>g2v13a@swbell.net
>-------------------------------------------------
>Bernard L Cohen wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Nov 1999 g2v13a@swbell.net wrote:
>>
>> > My thanks to Tosh Ushino, Douglas Minnema, and David Whitfil - you are
helping a
>> > "medical-type" understand the tragic events of a few weeks ago [and the
drama
>> > still unfolding]. You are welcome to my part of the bandwidth.
>>
>> What is so extraordinarily "tragic" about these events? Dozens of
>> workers are killed every day in industrial accidents in U.S. alone. Over a
>> hundred are killed every day in motor vehicle accidents. This accident
>> involved 3 people who made a very serious mistake and are suffering for
>> it. Our hospitals contain perhaps a million people who are suffering from
>> problems that are not of their own making.
>>
>>
>> Bernard L Cohen
>> University of Pittsburgh
>> Pittsburgh, PA 15260
>> Tel: (412)624-9245
>> Fax: (412)624-9163
>> e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu
>>
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>
jjrozental
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