It can happen on submarines, it can happen in the mail and it can happen if you fly a lot: a dose big enough to keep you out of radiological areas for a while. At the Pantex Plant earlier this year, it happened because someone left their dosimeter near a linear accelerator.
That’s according to a pair of recent reports by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), published this week and last on the independent federal nuclear watchdog’s website.
By the time the board published its latest reports on the incident, Pantex prime Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) had already told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing that the high dose reported in February had hit only the employee’s thermoluminescent dosimeter, not the employee.
The employee “inadvertently lost” the badge, CNS said, in February.
Now, the DNFSB reports have added some color to that picture.
The employee’s supervisor, the defense board said, discovered the badge “under equipment by the LINAC,” or linear accelerator. Pantex uses such equipment to see inside nuclear weapons passing through the Amarillo, Texas, service center, where the National Nuclear Security Administration performs major and minor weapons maintenance, and refurbs.
After the badge turned up and got checked out by the Nevada National Security Site about 1,100 miles away from Amarillo — Pantex doesn’t do its own dosimetry processing anymore — CNS discovered readings high enough to suspend work at Pantex’s Building 11-50 and temporarily bar the employee from working there.
But not soon enough, the defense board, and the NNSA, said.
While the employee did not get the dose their badge registered, “CNS did not respond to the potential radiation exposure in an adequate or timely manner,” the DNFSB wrote in its most recent report on the incident.
“CNS received data regarding the potential overexposure in late January, but did not restrict the worker from performing radiological work or having radiological area access until February 3rd,” the board wrote. “[W]ork involving that linear accelerator was also not paused until February 3rd as well.”
Editor’s note, March 15, 2021, 5:16 p.m. Eastern time: the story was corrected to show where the employee’s badge was processed.
