The licensee's
RSO reported that on March 9, 2010, a report was received from
Landauer indicating that a technician that worked at the licensee's facility received a left hand ring dose of 11,900 millirem. The right hand ring dose was 4030 millirem. The licensee began an investigation into these readings and determined that the technician may have had a high extremity dose to the finger tips. After interviews with the technician and reconstruction of the event the licensee now believes that the technician may have received a dose between 50
rem and 400
rem over a 10 square-centimeter area of his fingertips as the result of improper handling of the radionuclide Bromine-76. The dose exposure to the fingertips was calculated using the Varskin computer code.
The technician was handling 32 millicurie vials of Bromine-76 between February 4 and February 5, 2010, related to research activities at Washington University. Normally, the vials would be handled with a long-handled tool with shielding. For reasons uncertain, the technician is believed to have directly handled the vials on several occasions. The technician has approximately six years of work-history with this type of activity.
The technician experienced no observable effects from the exposure. The technician has not worked with radioactive materials since mid-February. The Landauer whole-body deep dose badge reading for the period in question was 25 millirem.
- * * RETRACTION FROM SUSAN LANGHORST TO PETE SNYDER ON 7/2/2010 at 1631 EDT * * *
The licensee reconstructed the dose for the event after conversing with NRC Region 3. The licensees reconstructed dose estimate was 26 rem which is not over the dose limit of 50 rem. Therefore, this event is not reportable.
Notified R3DO (Daley),
FSME EO (Lueman).