Radiation

While in college, I had a Summer job working for a contractor at the "site" West of Idaho Falls, Idaho, my home town. "The site" is the short-hand term for the Idaho Nuclear Energy Laboratory. (The facility is now called the "Idaho National Laboratory"). The following happened in, I believe, the Summer of 1966.

The contractors at the site used the Summer employees as substitutes for permanent employees who were on vacation. Moreover, we could be exposed to a year's worth of radiation in the three months of Summer.

Another Summer employee was, my high school classmate, Lloyd Barker.

Lloyd and I were often teamed together on two-person jobs. We talked constantly, but worked hard enough that we generally finished our assignments an hour or more early and then had nothing to do. So our supervisor, Ed Jewkes, told us we should ask someone nearby for additional work whenever we finished early.

One day we were working in a "hot cell." This is a building within a building in which radioactive items are stored. The cells are shielded and safely hold tools and parts that are contaminated with radioactive particles. I do not recall what we had been assigned to do in the hot cell, but I do remember that we were wearing special clothing and shoe covers and that we finished early.

A nearby HP (Health Physicist), whose name Lloyd now recalls may have been "Hernandez," asked us to open up the inner chamber of the hot cell (building in a building in a building) and take out a plastic bag of tools, and clean the tools to remove the radioactive particles. If successful, this would make the tools useable again. The tools were crescent wrenches, screwdrivers, and the like. The total value was likely less than $25.

Because we were talking, neither Lloyd nor I noticed that an alarm went off almost immediately upon opening the bag. The HP who assigned us to clean the tools, ran in and asked us why we did not react to the alarm, but also said that it was probably just one particle stuck in the filter. He changed the filter in the alarm, and left, but the alarm soon went off again. The HP came back in and said it must be a "beam" that was causing the alarm to sound! He then UNPLUGGED the alarm. We had opened up a bag that had a lot of bad friable stuff in it.

The HP had us read our dosimeters but they had gone off-scale, meaning that there was more radiation than they could read. The HP took our film badges. [Lloyd later became a supervisory HP and looked up the records of this event and learned that the HP reported we had been exposed to ZERO radiation!].

The HP led us to the locker room where we threw our clothing into a special container from which the clothes would be buried if washing would not remove the contamination. The HP ran a geiger counter over us, found radiation on each of us, and had us take a shower. Lloyd remembers a radiation detector built around a doorway leading into the locker room that went off when someone opened that door to enter the room. In other words, there was a lot of radiation.

As it turned out, Lloyd had americium in his left lung. [Americium does not occur naturally, but only as a fission product. It is used in smoke detectors]. I had something radioactive that I had swollowed. It may have been Cobalt 60.

Lloyd got to go home that evening, but I had to stay there, cook my own dinner in the cafeteria, and sleep in a bed in the lady's rest room. There was a shift change at 4:00 p.m. and another at midnight. The HP who took over at midnight, and who continued monitoring the radiation and its movement, was Ron Harker. Ron remembers the event to this day and has spoken to my brother Bill about it.

The next day, I was put in a room made from pre-World War II steel. (Steel made after that date has a small amount of radioactivity due to the nuclear bombs that have been exploded since that time.) The "site" was used, years ago, to test Naval guns. Parts of old battle ships were the targets. The inside walls of the room are covered in copper because copper is easy to clean. In this room, I sat on a comfortable lounge chair and listened to music while a machine measured all the radiation in my body. There was a spike in one of the isotopes of one of the elements, but I now forget which. Ron Harker thought it might have been cobalt 60. The half-life of cobalt 60 is 8 days. The man in charge of the room at the time was Dale Olsen. I telephoned Dale, but he did not recall this particular event, but does remember dad and also Lloyd. Dale indicated that this sort of contamination happened from time to time.

From there I went to a series of higher and higher officials to explain what happened and to be assured, over and over, that I was in no danger, would have a normal life, would have normal children if I wanted, and certainly had no reason to file a law suit. Meanwhile, the "spot" was still moving and I was given a container that looks somewhat like a lunch box, but had another purpose. I was expected to take the box home and carry my feces back to the lab in it. They wanted it, really wanted it, they said, so it could be analyzed in some weird way. The first day they gave this to me I intentionally "forgot" it. The second day, I took it from their office, but intentionally left it in my locker at the site. The third day, all traces of the radiation were gone and the opportunity had "passed."

Our supervisor never again told us to look for additional work when we finished early.