The following information was obtained from the State of
Louisiana via email:
Event date and time: On August 27, 2015, [a licensee employee] reported a lost QC/QA check source utilized to perform the daily constancy on the dose calibrator. He did the daily test at approximately 6:00 a.m. [CDT] with the source. He noticed the source was missing at approximately 1130. His administrator and he used survey meters and searched every possible place where the source could be, but have not located the missing source. [He] reported the source missing to LADEQ Radiation Assessment at 1538 on August 27, 2015.
The source is an Atomic Labs 102 microCurie Cs-137 check source. The model number given was #11010170 and the serial number was 356013-0001. The source was last leak tested on April 29, 2015, with no leakage detected.
This site is a medical institution. The source was kept in a locked hot lab in the Nuclear Medicine Department. They surveyed the Nuclear Medicine Dept., the Radiology Department and the waste disposal location. KLS Physics Consultants was called in to help with the search and the reporting requirements.
Event Location: Ville Platte Medical Center/dba Acadian Medical Center, 3501 Hwy 190, Eunice, LA 70535. The last known location within the facility was during the daily dose calibrator constancy check.
Louisiana Event Report ID No.: LA-150014, T165187
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. For additional information go to
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1227_web.pdf