On the afternoon of May 28, 2010, Nucletron Corporation (Columbia,
Maryland) received a call from 21st Oncology Katin Radiation (Martinsburg,
West Virginia) who received a phone call from
QSA Global (Burlington,
Massachusetts) saying they received a call from a GM plant located in the Martinsburg,
West Virginia general area. The GM plant had mistakenly received a properly shielded radiation source from a common carrier. Because of an exception in the shipping paperwork, the shielded source was supposed to be shipped back to Katin Radiation.
The device is a Microselectron HDR Brachytherapy Afterloader: serial number #31836. The source is IR-192, 4.69 Ci, serial number D36C-1703.
The common carrier is investigating the driver's routing and logistics during the day of the event in order to track the source.
- * * UPDATE FROM DEBRA BENSEN TO VINCE KLCO ON 6/1/10 AT 1759 EDT * * *
Notified by the licensee that the source was located at a GM plant in the Martinsburg, West Virginia area. The common carrier picked up the source and delivered it to Katin Radiation at 1632 EDT. The source packaging was inspected and showed no evidence of damage or tampering.
Notified the R1DO (Dentel), FSME (Camper), and ILTAB (English).
THIS MATERIAL EVENT CONTAINS A "CATEGORY 3" LEVEL OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL
Category 3 sources, if not safely managed or securely protected, could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them, or were otherwise in contact with them, for some hours. It could possibly - although it is unlikely - be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period of days to weeks. These sources are typically used in practices such as fixed industrial gauges involving high activity sources (for example: level gauges, dredger gauges, conveyor gauges and spinning pipe gauges) and well logging. For additional information go to http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1227_web.pdf
Although IAEA categorization of this event is typically based on device type, the staff has been made aware of the actual activity of the source, and after calculation determines that it is a Category 3 event.
Note: the value assigned by device type "Category 2" is different than the calculated value "Category 3