 INES 2 |
RADIOACTIVE ORPHANED SOURCES OF CS-137 |
On September 27 2004 a radioactive source was detected when transported in a vehicle to an important steel mill. A warning was received from the monitoring equipment installed to survey entering scrap iron at the entrance of the Scrap Service Company. Immediately the System of Intervention in Radiological Emergencies of the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (ARN) was called, detecting an orphaned radioactive source of Cs-137.
The material found was an unlabelled and unidentified piece of metal.
The Intervention Group took immediately actions putting the source under control and defence.
The ARN inspection team decided to get into an investigation to clarify the origin of this radioactive source finding that this type of sources is commonly used in ships and its origin was a country which use Russian as its language. Therefore, it was highly probable that there were more sources than the first one.
After an arduous search through Entre Rios Province, searching different plants of scrap iron storage and interviewing diverse people, the information of the place where three remaining sources were, was obtained.
The sources found in the farm had been separated from the tank during recycling activities. This tank had been acquired by the property-owner to a Company, which buys ships in order to dismantle them to sell their parts as scrap.
The place was a property in where it had been carried on the dismantling of an oil gas tank (about 3000 litres volume) that had been part of the Russian flag boat (LIGAGNE).
Originally, each one of the three sources were installed into a device to measure level and after the recycling procedure had been placed in a shed not knowing the farmer which type of material had manipulated.
ARN Inspectors made a visual examination of the devices containing radioactive material, two of them hadn’t any label indicating radioactive material, and the third one had a deteriorated label. It was confirmed that the present radionuclide was Cs-137.
Radiological Evaluations were made at the site and it was decided to transport the radioactive material to a suitable site. (The measured environmental dose rate in contact with the three devices was about 1 mSv/h and 5 öSv/h at one meter of them).
On the basis of the information found about the origin of the radioactive material, the inspection board continued its investigation in the ports of the zone.
The searching carried on similar boats, present in those ports, did not reveal the presence of radioactive material. This ARN continues with the investigation
Event date: Mon, 27-09-2004
