When Chernobyl happened (1986), I was adulting in NJ, and though too far from the disaster to feel immediate concern, in the intervening years I’d had education about radiation. In the process of becoming an industrial hygienist in grad school, I took a class on radiation safety. And when I worked my first job at a chemical plant in Baton Rouge, I served as the site radiation safety officer (among other things). We had a handful of devices, most used for level detection in gauges. All licensed by the NRC. Mostly they just existed in the manufacturing area without consequence – exactly what you want for radiation devices. Then one day I got this call: “Hey, what do you want me to do with this radioactive device?” It seems Maintenance was doing work on the reactor and pulled the device off the tank. It was now sitting on the ground in front of the control room and the shutter was frozen in the open position! Good grief. My Maintenance Department there never quite stepped up in the safety arena.
Being in Baton Rouge, there was a lot of oil industry. And with the oil industry comes a lot of pipelines. Radioactive probes are used to inspect the pipelines – sending the device down the pipe to radiograph welds and look for other defects. I remember hearing about a worker who found the device, didn’t know what it was, and put it in his shirt pocket. I know he got quite a nasty burn and dose of radiation. I’m not sure what happened to him longer-term.
Radiation was on my mind today because they just placed a new protective sarcophagus over the Chernobyl nuclear plant. The world’s worst nuclear accident occurred 30 years ago and a 20-mile area around the plant is still uninhabitable. I read that the shelter cost $1.6 billion dollars – and it was funded by more than 40 governments! That was so interesting to me – that the world came together to do this. As a sciency person, I’d love to know the details about how many people were exposed to how much radiation in the process of placing the new barrier.