The International Atomic Energey Committee who is tasked with investigating
this kind of accident has many reports on accidents including irradiators. It
seems that these are not uncommon (as radiation accidents go), probably
because the radioactive sources in irradiators are made to be moved about and
occasionally transported, much more so than, e.g. the radioactive fuel in
reactors, or even weapons.
Lax standards or just changing circumstances such as an owner moving or going
out of business (or collapsing entirely, like in the case of the USSR) has
caused accidents, in the past.
A famous example is the accident in Goiânia, in Brazil, in 1985. In short, a
private radiotherapy institute moved house leaving behind a working caesium
137 teletherapy unit with the source still in it. Two people took parts of the
unit, broke them apart and sold them to a scrap yard. The owner noticed the
blue glow of the strange salt-like substance in the unit and took it home and
showed it to his friends and family. People became fascinated with the sight
and took fragments of it to their homes where their kids and family played
with it. Eventually, someone connected the fact that people were getting sick
with the strange glowing stuff and took a sample to the public health
department. This led to the accident being discovered.
Some 250 people were contaminated and four died while others suffered
radiation sickness, but fortunately recovered. Lest this be taken as evidence
of the low risk from such accidents let it just be said: you don't want your
kids playing with sparkly blue radioactive stardust.
I'm a radiology resident at UW and we haven't really heard much about this event. Harborview is a phenomenal hospital, and (in my opinion) the best one in the UW system. The University has a pretty good track record of admitting fault, even when it costs the system millions. See: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/uw-medicine...
Harborview was the only profitable hospital in the system. Seattle is the second-largest tech city in the nation and housing prices have grown astronomically, just like in SF. The difference between UW and, say, Stanford or UCSF, is that UW's patient population comes from the WWAMI states. They don't typically treat the young tech works, although I have had a couple older Boeing/Microsoft patients. UW/Harborview patients continue to be mostly low-income Seattlites and tertiary care/trauma patients from the WWAMI states. The UW takes care of poor/rural patients while existing in a wealthy city. It's a unique place to work.
EDIT: I asked my fellow radiology residents about this event
"We had a nuc med lecture on the event! It's super interesting how they managed it."
"We had a separate nuclear medicine lecture on a Tuesday by the woman who helped managed the incident and is responsible for nuclear accidents."
"Was on HMC call that night. Physics lecture on that was useful. Radiation --> reflex call radiologist is a real thing."
"Cool. Honestly they should just reflex call them. I just paged them anyway."
“3.6 roentgens per hour. Not great, not terrible.”
Thank you, Capitol Hill Seattle (and Margo Vansynghel in particular!), for real investigative journalism that the major Seattle papers and news outlets haven't done on this story.
I have minor quibbles on the facts, and with some of the tone of the story, but I'm glad to see that a journalist was able to put in the time to research and write a long-form story about which the Seattle community will care.
For the commenters lining up to throw stones -- we all find in time that our own homes are made, at least in part, of glass. It is intrinsic to any accident that at least one mistake was made, but discerning how and why the mistake came to pass almost always takes longer than anyone would like. Throwing stones too early often means that they will miss their mark, becoming mistakes of their own.
Edit: crediting Margo Vansynghel, the article's author
Criticizing people with the use of hindsight is one thing, but if "this is unacceptably risky" would have been the right response to the planned procedure beforehand, then it is still valid afterwards.
> The Goiânia accident [ɡojˈjɐniɐ] was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, in Goiânia, in the Brazilian state of Goiás, after a forgotten radiotherapy source was taken from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 were found to have significant levels of radioactive material in or on their bodies.
> In the cleanup operation, topsoil had to be removed from several sites, and several hundred houses were demolished. All the objects from within those houses, including personal possessions, were seized and incinerated. Time magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters" and the International Atomic Energy Agency called it "one of the world's worst radiological incidents".
Well, imagine you have 500 wooden chairs, lightly contaminated.
If you incinerate them carefully (running all waste gases through filters before being released to the atmosphere), you can convert 500 wooden chairs into a couple pounds of contaminated ashes and filters. Which are much easier and cheaper to dispose of.
It sounds like the removal of the vial was done on-site for somewhat reasonable reasons, but in the future they ought to have a temporary structure erected during removal so that if something happens, the dust doesn't get blown and tracked everywhere. Doing this in a shipping container would have avoided all of these problems and most of the exposure to people as well.
"International Isotopes contractors had set up a secure steel “chamber” wherein they would perform a crucial, most perilous part of the operation: removing the capsule with cesium-137 from the irradiator."
The problem is they didn't realise it had happened straight away. They only discovered the leak later, when performing a routine wipe-down check of the area. There are still details missing though, like how come they didn't perform the wipe-down check before opening the chamber? Or did they? As the article says, it's not clear exactly what happened.
I’m curious how you don’t know that you cut into the capsule. It’s supposedly a white powder, wouldn’t it make a cloud?
Also if this is possible wouldn’t you put sone contingencies in place, like mount the grinder on limited travel arm or something? Sound’s like they just went at it with a $30 DeWalt.
> They didn't realise it had happened. They only discovered the leak later
"Trained experts in radiation equiped with geiger counters and all the stuff, were unable to see it coming" Chapter 35.
They had one job. One small area to check for radiation leak in a controlled environment. How this could happen?
A) Maybe geiger counters can't detect Caesium radiation? I'm not expert in the area but would appreciate the point of view of some experts.
B) Geiger counters failed. How? didn't have batteries?
C) The leak was detected in time, but the culprit keeped his/her mouth firmly closed because... human nature. Not my fault. I didn't cut it.
D) There was not leak to detect (Leak was in a different area, Hidden second point of radiation like waste containers accumulated in the broom closet, ect)
Choose your option. In any case it feels like a lie again. This is not how you build trust on nuclear safety procedures.
Perhaps the main focus is making it extremely difficult to access the radioactive material. So, no locks or anything that easy, you weld the thing shut. Makes it harder to decommission, but also makes it harder to steal.
>This could destroy the careers of people who have been working their entire lives on research meant to save lives and improve public health and hospital outcomes
Happened on my campus. Freezers even had temperature alarms monitored by the university police, but no one reacted to the alerts. Among other things, an 80 year longitudinal study was lost.
My university lost power for about 9 hours a few years ago. Several labs did not have their -80s hooked into emergency backup power (due to limits of the building, very understandable reasons). I remember a professor sitting in the dark hallway outside his lab, in tears. He could only watch as temperatures rose, and he lost almost everything. It was heartbreaking.
In looking for the construction of the capsule I found this article about a similar contamination issue with Cesium. Reading through the Events section that discovers theft and attempts at recovering the Cesium because of its blue glow are mind blowing.
Thanks for sharing. Makes one think about all those efforts to come up with a way to make nuclear waste sites look scary for millenia. Of course, you could just bury it somewhere and not leave a mark, but that's no fun.
Readit News
Lax standards or just changing circumstances such as an owner moving or going out of business (or collapsing entirely, like in the case of the USSR) has caused accidents, in the past.
A famous example is the accident in Goiânia, in Brazil, in 1985. In short, a private radiotherapy institute moved house leaving behind a working caesium 137 teletherapy unit with the source still in it. Two people took parts of the unit, broke them apart and sold them to a scrap yard. The owner noticed the blue glow of the strange salt-like substance in the unit and took it home and showed it to his friends and family. People became fascinated with the sight and took fragments of it to their homes where their kids and family played with it. Eventually, someone connected the fact that people were getting sick with the strange glowing stuff and took a sample to the public health department. This led to the accident being discovered.
Some 250 people were contaminated and four died while others suffered radiation sickness, but fortunately recovered. Lest this be taken as evidence of the low risk from such accidents let it just be said: you don't want your kids playing with sparkly blue radioactive stardust.
IAEA accident report here:
https://www.iaea.org/publications/3684/the-radiological-acci...
UW Medicine itself is not doing well financially (they lost $75 million last year): https://www.washington.edu/regents/files/2018/01/2018-02-B-2...
Harborview was the only profitable hospital in the system. Seattle is the second-largest tech city in the nation and housing prices have grown astronomically, just like in SF. The difference between UW and, say, Stanford or UCSF, is that UW's patient population comes from the WWAMI states. They don't typically treat the young tech works, although I have had a couple older Boeing/Microsoft patients. UW/Harborview patients continue to be mostly low-income Seattlites and tertiary care/trauma patients from the WWAMI states. The UW takes care of poor/rural patients while existing in a wealthy city. It's a unique place to work.
EDIT: I asked my fellow radiology residents about this event
"We had a nuc med lecture on the event! It's super interesting how they managed it."
"We had a separate nuclear medicine lecture on a Tuesday by the woman who helped managed the incident and is responsible for nuclear accidents."
"Was on HMC call that night. Physics lecture on that was useful. Radiation --> reflex call radiologist is a real thing."
"Cool. Honestly they should just reflex call them. I just paged them anyway."
“3.6 roentgens per hour. Not great, not terrible.”
Is that a “Chernobyl” (HBO miniseries) reference? (Protip: watch it)
I have minor quibbles on the facts, and with some of the tone of the story, but I'm glad to see that a journalist was able to put in the time to research and write a long-form story about which the Seattle community will care.
For the commenters lining up to throw stones -- we all find in time that our own homes are made, at least in part, of glass. It is intrinsic to any accident that at least one mistake was made, but discerning how and why the mistake came to pass almost always takes longer than anyone would like. Throwing stones too early often means that they will miss their mark, becoming mistakes of their own.
Edit: crediting Margo Vansynghel, the article's author
> The Goiânia accident [ɡojˈjɐniɐ] was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, in Goiânia, in the Brazilian state of Goiás, after a forgotten radiotherapy source was taken from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 were found to have significant levels of radioactive material in or on their bodies.
> In the cleanup operation, topsoil had to be removed from several sites, and several hundred houses were demolished. All the objects from within those houses, including personal possessions, were seized and incinerated. Time magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters" and the International Atomic Energy Agency called it "one of the world's worst radiological incidents".
That sounds like a "Dilute the pollution by pouring it into the ocean" solution. Isn't burial the better option?
For radioactive isotopes with moderate half lives (that are not produced industrially in serious abundance), this actually works.
If you incinerate them carefully (running all waste gases through filters before being released to the atmosphere), you can convert 500 wooden chairs into a couple pounds of contaminated ashes and filters. Which are much easier and cheaper to dispose of.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...
"International Isotopes contractors had set up a secure steel “chamber” wherein they would perform a crucial, most perilous part of the operation: removing the capsule with cesium-137 from the irradiator."
The problem is they didn't realise it had happened straight away. They only discovered the leak later, when performing a routine wipe-down check of the area. There are still details missing though, like how come they didn't perform the wipe-down check before opening the chamber? Or did they? As the article says, it's not clear exactly what happened.
Also if this is possible wouldn’t you put sone contingencies in place, like mount the grinder on limited travel arm or something? Sound’s like they just went at it with a $30 DeWalt.
The whole thing seems kind of ridiculous.
"Trained experts in radiation equiped with geiger counters and all the stuff, were unable to see it coming" Chapter 35.
They had one job. One small area to check for radiation leak in a controlled environment. How this could happen?
A) Maybe geiger counters can't detect Caesium radiation? I'm not expert in the area but would appreciate the point of view of some experts.
B) Geiger counters failed. How? didn't have batteries?
C) The leak was detected in time, but the culprit keeped his/her mouth firmly closed because... human nature. Not my fault. I didn't cut it.
D) There was not leak to detect (Leak was in a different area, Hidden second point of radiation like waste containers accumulated in the broom closet, ect)
Choose your option. In any case it feels like a lie again. This is not how you build trust on nuclear safety procedures.
Deleted Comment
That is devastating for the researchers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident#Events