At 2023 EDT, the following email was received from Decisive Testing:
On April 16, 2004, a radiographer was working on a schedule 40 stainless steel 4" pipe. The Ir-192 radiography operation was being conducted inside a shielded x-ray room, but was considered by the licensee to be a temporary jobsite for materials radiography. The camera, the cable and collimator were inside the room while the operator and crank were located approximately 8' from the closed x-ray door. At 1:15 PM, the radiographer finished the 6th shot and reentered the room to prepare for the 7th shot. After setting up the 7th shot, he picked up his survey meter as he left the room (the meter had been placed on top of the camera when he entered the room) and noticed the meter was off scale. He exited the room and checked the position of the radiography source by attempting to crank it out, only to discover that he had failed to crank the source in after the 6th shot. His 0-200 millirem dosimeter was off scale and he was not wearing his alarming ratemeter. His dosimeter was sent in for processing by overnight mail. The licensee did a re-enactment and estimated the radiographer's whole body dose to be under 1 rem. The radiographer's extremity dose is estimated to be under 10 rem.
Source: Industrial Nuclear, model 7, Ir-192 source assayed 10/16/03 and decayed to 17.9 Curies on 4-16-04). Camera: Amersham, model 660B, serial # B2928. Collimator: Industrial Radiography Maintenance & Supply, model - tungsten mini (side port) collimator (attenuation 1/16 for Ir-192).
RHB responded to the site on Saturday, April 17, 2004 to interview the radiographer and RSO. The investigation is ongoing, but it does appear that neither the whole body nor extremity regulatory dose limits for the radiographer were exceeded.
- * * UPDATE 1500 EDT ON 4/22/04 FROM ROBERT GREGER TO S. SANDIN VIA FAX * * *
The dosimeter results were received from Landauer on 4/21/04 and showed a whole body dose of 95 mrem for the radiographer in this event, which is consistent with a reenactment conducted by the licensee. Based on this information, the whole body dose did not exceed regulatory limits. The extremity dose to the radiographer is still under investigation.
Notified R4DO (Bywater) and
NMSS (Torres).