The following was received from the
Washington State Department of Health, Office of Radiation Protection, via email:
The Washington Agreement State program was notified on 3/31/2022, about a lost source. Kaiser Permanente Bellevue lost a 10 mCi Gd-153 source. The source was in its leaded container in a shipping box and had not been processed in yet to the facility when housekeeping picked it up and threw it away. It then went to their own [trash] compactor and unfortunately was picked up by the garbage company. This event was only discovered a few hours ago.
Washington State arrived onsite at Kaiser Bellevue at 1300 PDT and spoke with the Director of Imaging. Surveys of the garbage compactor [indicate that] the source is likely intact, as no contamination was found. The source is still lost, but is likely in the company garbage or landfill.
WA incident no.: WA-022-006
- * * UPDATE ON 05/02/2022 AT 1526 EDT FROM TRISTAN HAY TO LLOYD DESOTELL * * *
The following update was received from the state of Washington via email:
Based on their [licensee] corrective actions we [the state of Washington] have closed the incident. The lost source will most likely not be findable due to it making it into the landfill already and still being in its shielded container.
Notified R4DO (Warnick) and ILTAB, NMSS Events Notification and CNSC via email.
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