16 Employees At INL Exposed To Radioactive Materials
Idaho National Laboratory officials said 16 workers were exposed to radioactive material, not the 17 originally reported.
At a media conference held on Wednesday, officials said the workers were sent home after being monitored and tested for radiation Tuesday night.
Three of those employees were brought back for further testing Wednesday morning.
They said two of them tested positive for Americium 241 in their lungs. Just before 5 p.m. Wednesday, INL officials said only one of those employees is now confirmed to have Americium 241 present in their lungs. They said the presence of Americium means there will also be Plutonium present in the lungs.
The exposure happened Tuesday afternoon at the Zero Power Physics Reactor at the Materials and Fuels Complex about 38 miles west of Idaho Falls.
INL managers said the workers were preparing some clam shell containers which held fuel plates to transport them to another a DOE site. They said the material has not been exposed since 1981. The shells were encased in stainless steel and the casings were ruptured while working with them, causing the exposure, they reported.
During Wednesday’s press conference, officials said the containers were being prepared for transportation to a D.O.E. site in Nevada, where the specific nuclear material inside the clam shell containers was needed.
They later asked that statement be retracted, and that the materials were being prepared for transfer to another D.O.E. site, but did not provide specific details regarding location.
All 16 employees are being monitored closely, they said. They also said it may be several weeks until they know exactly the extent of the individual doses.
INL said they have stopped all work associated with transuranic materials — meaning, materials heavier than Uranium — handled outside gloveboxes or hot cells at the complex. They also reported they have closed off the area where the exposure happened.
They said there was no release to environment and the public was never in danger.
