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| Entered date | Event description | |
|---|---|---|
| ENS 44757 | 7 January 2009 17:54:00 | The State of New Mexico was notified by a Wal-Mart corporate representative located in Bentonville, AR, indicating that Wal-Mart was unable to account for 206 tritium exit signs (which are general licensed materials) that were used at one time in Wal-Mart stores throughout the State of New Mexico. The Wal-Mart representative informed the State Office that Wal-Mart had exhausted searching for the tritium exit signs and considered them to be lost and/or missing. The State of New Mexico was provided a listing from corporate Wal-Mart of the store locations along with information on the tritium exit sign manufacturers, model and serial numbers and curie content where known. 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. This source is not amongst those sources or devices identified by the IAEA Code of Conduct for the Safety & Security of Radioactive Sources to be of concern from a radiological standpoint. Therefore is it being categorized as a less than Category 3 source. |
| ENS 44185 | 2 May 2008 19:00:00 | The following information was received from the State of New Mexico via email: A radioactive gauge was found in a Farmington, NM scrap metal facility and reported to the New Mexico Radiation Control Bureau (Bureau) on Friday, April 18, 2008. An employee at the scrap metal facility reported that a semi-truck delivering scrap metal to a Colorado metal recycler was found to have a 'hot spot'. The radioactive bale was isolated and returned to NM. Using information from the label on the gauge, the generally licensed source was traced to a NM radioactive material licensee. The Bureau's investigation included a review of Colorado's fax of DOT-SP 10656 Shipment Approval Form (Colorado survey: 1.8 mr/hr on side of trailer), interviews with personnel at the scrap metal facility, radiation surveys of the device, and interviews with licensee personnel. The Bureau's radiation survey of the gauge indicated exposure rates of 7-10 mr/hr at contact with the source housing and 0.3-0.5 mr/hr at one meter from the source. Discussions with licensee personnel revealed the gauge was listed on the August 20, 2007 physical inventory and the Radiation Safety Officer (RSO) had been laid off on November 7, 2007 in the midst of a scheduled outage of operations that included removal of gauges from service. It appears the gauge was removed from service and discarded with other scrap metal, arriving at the scrap metal facility sometime in late March 2008. The gauge was retrieved by the licensee and placed in secure storage. The loss of control of the radioactive source is attributed to lack of oversight of the licensee's radiation program during gauge removal operations. Based on scrap metal facility configuration, location of the radioactive bale on the semi trailer during transport, storage of the gauge upon return, and exposure rates from the gauge, it is estimated that public dose limits were not exceeded. The NM Environment Department is evaluating enforcement actions in response to the incident. The gauge was manufactured by Kay-Ray. It has a 50 mCi Cs-137 sealed source, S/N 92B-03016 and was licensed to Public Service of New Mexico. |