On 5/30/2018 a physicist for Christiana Care Home Services discovered that 50
Iodine-125 seeds were missing from the Hot Lab. The licensee began investigating to determine what happened to the seeds. The licensee determined that the seeds had been initially brought into the Hot Lab on 2/6/2018. The licensee believes that on 3/16/2018 an employee from Occupational Safety picked up empty trays from the Hot Lab to recycle them as part of their recycling program and that the
Iodine-125 seeds may have been on two of the trays picked up. The trays were taken to a trailer where normal scrap metal is placed and were later picked up by the recycling company.
The licensee believes, but could not confirm that the recycling company picked up the trays along with the seeds which were then taken to universal waste disposal. The licensee interviewed the occupational safety individual and the individual could not confirm that he saw any Iodine-125 seeds in the trays he placed into the recycling box. The licensee has also contacted the recycling company to determine if the boxes can be retrieved, however, the recycling company stated that the box of scrap metal could not be retrieved at this point.
The licensee contacted the Iodine-125 vendor to confirm that the inventory that they have in their possession was correct. The quantity of seeds missing consisted of 50 Iodine-125 seeds with a total activity of 6 millicuries.
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