The licensee reports that while attempting to extract
tritium used in manufacturing minatron well-logging tools, it was determined that the
tritium supply vial was empty. Four vials of
tritium were shipped to the licensee's facility on 9/20/06 and placed in a storage vault until used. The
tritium was receipt inspected with no abnormal observation and swiped with no finding of radiological contamination. The vials were also double sealed in plastic bags. The vials are shipped from Ontario Hydro (Canada) and each vial contains approximately 100 curies of
tritium. When one of these vials was loaded into the manufacturing process line and the vial opened, no
tritium gas was detected.
The licensee notes that the vials are shipped at a vacuum relative to atmospheric pressure and the vacuum was still intact in the vial making leakage an unlikely scenario. In addition, the inside of the plastic sealing bags had no evidence of tritium. The licensee is currently trying to contact Ontario Hydro to further its investigation into what happened to the tritium.
The licensee has also been in contact with NRC Region 1 (Jackson) concerning this event.
THIS MATERIAL EVENT CONTAINS A "LESS THAN CAT 3" LEVEL OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL
Sources that are "Less than
IAEA Category 3 sources," are either sources that are very unlikely to cause permanent injury to individuals or contain a very small amount of radioactive material that would not cause any permanent injury. Some of these sources, such as
moisture density gauges or thickness
gauges that are Category 4, the amount of unshielded radioactive material, if not safely managed or securely protected, could possibly - although it is unlikely - temporarily injure someone who handled it or were otherwise in contact with it, or who were close to it for a period of many weeks.