RSO number two; the too-good. What did I name him? I forget. Tim Zieglerson? It doesn’t matter. He’s real, and still alive as I write this, and perhaps he’ll read about himself, and smile. Come: read along, smile along.

This year for the Society of Occupational Physics in Health and Safety (SOPHists) annual meeting, writers are invited to submit papers on “reasonableness.” This is a reference to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s legal policy that occupational ionizing radiation exposure should be limited to ALARA, which stands for “As Low As Reasonably Achieveable.” This story would be my paper, had I submitted one.

One day on my way to work I dropped off my car to get a new set of tires, and I walked the remaining half mile or so to work. After work, because that’s what these places do, take walk-ins preferentially and push back the jobs they already have lined up, (who can blame them for trying to maximize their daily profit?) I walked over to get my car and instead was told it wasn’t yet ready. So there I am waiting for my car to finish up when my cell phone rings, and it’s my boss, a truly intelligent guy, in some ways, Tim Zieglerson, RSO PhD SOPH.

“Hello, Justin? Can you come back into work? We have a large radioactive spill in one of the research labs.” Normally I would have been home by then, but because of the tires I said “Sure I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m at Mavis Bacon Teaches Tires and I’ll walk back over; my car isn’t ready yet.” As I walked back I got some of the details by phone.

The spill was in a lab using the radioactive isotope Phosphorus-32, aka P-32. Stable Phosphorus is P-31, with 15 protons and 16 neutrons. Phosphorus 32 has an extra neutron, moving it farther from the “line of stability,” which leads to one neutron (“and I don’t care which one” – Bill Hurd) kicking out a beta particle and transitioning into a proton, thus converting the whole atom into a completely different element: S-32, Sulphur. It’s amazing. This P-32 beta particle, or electron, is very high energy and so very easy to detect with a Geiger counter. This beta also has a higher biological damage to the skin and eyes, and it has a short half-life of about two weeks, so it’s always churnin’ and burnin’ away like the Little Engine That Could. 

I stopped at the Radiation Safety office to grab supplies; a couple of Geiger counters, which we call “friskers,” some paper towels, a couple of spray bottles of Rad-Away (our favorite decontamination fluid, sort of like Window-X or Formula 48 3/4) some protective shoe covers (AKA booties) and surgical gloves and off I went to the spill. I didn’t take a cart at first so that I could just go up the stairs and not waste time waiting for the elevator. I reached the second floor and as I turned from the stair case there was my boss, The Radiation Safety Officer, Tim, with Cienee Mahila, a PhD student from India, standing in the hall outside the Phizockovitch lab. I had often delivered the vials of P-32 to Cienee when they were delivered to the Radiation Safety office. I considered her very intelligent, and attractive.

“Justin, that was quick” said Tim.

“Well, I didn’t go all the way home” I replied. “What’s going on? What have you done so far?”

Tim explained that one of the lab’s Radiation Workers had partly missed the plastic 5 gallon plastic bottle, called a “carboy,” in the Beta Shield Box when dumping their hot (radioactive) liquid waste into it. The beta box was a little cracked on the bottom and nobody noticed as the liquid radioactive waste slowly leaked out from the beta box bottom onto the floor. People walked through it, tracking hot P-32 all over the lab. Several pairs of shoes were contaminated. One person left the lab to go to a meeting and left hot footprints all the way down the hallway and all over the carpet in the meeting room.

“Where would you like me to start?” I asked.

“Cienee and I are working on the lab, why don’t you mark off the footprints down the hall, and post the meeting room as Radioactive: Do Not Enter, then come back here.”

So that’s what I did; it was pretty straightforward. Left, right, left, right, the frisker showed the way, clicking faster at each hot footprint, and I stuck a piece of masking tape at each little beta hotspot so later I could easily find and attempt to decontaminate them. There were a few security guards positioned to keep people out of the hallways. I held my Geiger counter wand out to one of them and said “Halt! Who goes there?” He got a chuckle out of it. Who doesn’t like a little Gallows Humor?

I then posted the room, but not exactly as Tim had suggested. “Postings,” or signage, are a big deal in Radiation Safety. It’s important, because it’s the law, that the sign identifies the correct hazard. In this case I posted the meeting room as “Caution, Radioactive Contamination Area.” The room was not a “Radiation Area” because the radiation dose was very low. The contamination levels were also fairly low, but still had to be cleaned up before the room could be used again. The security guards keeping the hallways clear were adequate such that we didn’t otherwise barricade or post the hallways. We felt it was under control.

I went back to the Phizockovitch lab to see how Tim and Cienee were doing, and I wondered how long they had been working on it. When did the spill first happen? When was it noticed? How long after Tim was finally advised of the situation did he call me to help?

“Hey, Tim, I marked off the footprints and posted the meeting room. What are you up to? What’s next?”

“Cienee and I are straightening out the lab, we bagged up people’s hot shoes, and I let most of them go home. How about if you see how easy it would be to decon the halls?”

“Sure, Tim.” I put on a pair of surgical gloves, I was already wearing booties, and grabbed the Rad-Away and paper towels. A spritz of decon fluid and a wipe of the paper towels and the P-32 came right up off the linoleum hallway floors. Other than the sheer number of footprint hotspots, this would be easy, but time consuming. I put the hot paper towel into the radioactive waste bag and proceeded to the next hot footprint. It was no surprise that the hot stuff was easily removed because it hadn’t been spilled directly onto the floor, but was merely being sloughed off the contaminated shoes of whomever had gone to the meeting room, unaware they were leaving a trail of decaying radioactive material. Before continuing I stuck my head back into the lab and let Tim know the crap was coming right up off the floor and it would take a while, but at least it was working. (In the rad safety business a common phrase for being contaminated is “crapped up.”) Tim agreed that I would continue cleaning up all the footsteps along the path to the meeting room while he and Cienee continued to work on the lab, although I was starting to wonder what taking so long. Were they trying to get it perfect, or just in a stable condition and finish up tomorrow? I didn’t ask, but got back to work on the halls.

After a good while went by, things seemed to be going well and I finished deconning the hall. I went downstairs to get a utility cart from our Rad Safety loading dock to carry away the bags of rad waste and also the bagged shoes of the lab workers and whatever else. I hopped on the elevator, and when I got to the second floor and rolled my cart into the hallway I saw a security guard talking on the radio clipped to her breast pocket and two nurses just ahead of the guard hurrying into the Phisokovitch lab. I heard another set of elevator doors open behind me and two more nurses came around the corner with an empty wheelchair. Turns out Cienee the PhD student was a diabetic and she hadn’t eaten for several hours. She had passed out. In all the excitement she hadn’t let Tim Zieglerson know of her condition and needs, and it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone might need a break to recharge. He’d been entirely focused on saving the world from the spill of P-32, which in reality we had quite well under control.

The nurses wheeled Cienee down to the Emergency Room, and Tim locked the lab. The hall was clean, the the conference room and lab were posted and locked, and Tim said we were done for the night. I took my cart full of rad waste and supplies back to our loading dock, and Tim went to the ER to see how Cienee was doing. I went home, planning what we should do the next morning to finish the cleanup.

When I came in the next day Tim and I went down to the conference room to try to decontaminate the carpet. I had a good idea of what would do the trick, so I brought up a few rolls of duct tape. The Principal Investigator (PI) of the lab was worried that the carpet would have to be replaced at his cost, but if my hunch was right that wouldn’t be necessary. I pulled some of the tape away from the roll, then pulled it backward around the roll such that it was now a circle of the sticky side of the tape. I rolled it this way back and forth across the carpet and sure enough the P-32 came right off the carpet and onto the tape. This was a common method of decontamination both in the nuclear power industry and the US Navy Nuclear Power Program and was simply called the “tape press.” In this case it worked for the same reason the hallway was so easy to decontaminate: the P-32 wasn’t poured into the carpet, it was merely tracked in and transferred from the shoe to the carpet. It was only on the surface fibers and dust, so it was easily transferred to the tape. The dictionary definition of decontamination in the nuclear power field is “the transfer of radioactive material from an undesired location to a place of greater desire.” In other words, it’s still radioactive, but now it’s in a bag marked “Radioactive Waste” rather than all over the carpet. You just move it somewhere else.

Tim Zieglerson got a big smile on his face as he frisked the area of carpet where I had worked the magic of the tape press. The radioactive material was gone, with the Geiger counter only registering the slow, ever present clicks know as “background radiation.” (There is never zero radiation. Radiation is everywhere. Even bananas have naturally occurring radioactive potassium 40, K-40.) I held out the roll or tape and Tim frisked it and there were all the clicks for the Geiger counter to sing about, in fact it was darn near what we like to call “Screaming.” Success!

I stripped off that section of tape, and made a new sticky side out circle. Tim grabbed a second roll of tape, and to his infinite credit he jumped into the task and together we rolled all the P-32 off the carpet and into the rad waste bag. The biggest spot of crapped up carpet was where the lab worker had been seated, as he must have been shifting his feet back and forth as he sat through whatever boring meeting took place in the conference room. Tim and I got the whole carpet below what the industry considers “detectable” and the PI was ecstatic that he didn’t have to pay for a new carpet.

Later that day Dr. Tim Zieglerson, RSO PhD SOPH called me into his office. He was leaning back in his chair behind his desk and I took a seat across from him. “Well,” he said “how did I do?”

He seemed to want me to rate his performance. Tim knew I had been around the block and had seen quite a bit. I was in the Nuclear Navy for six years, including time as an instructor,and had served on a Nuclear Submarine. I worked as a contract Radiation Safety Technician for another ten years, working at about a dozen Nuclear Power Plants during refueling outages and Nuclear Plant decommissionings. I had been at Roquefort University/Weaks Hospital for about another six years by this point. He wanted my opinion.

“Well,” I answered, “other than sending a young woman to the emergency room I think we did ok. How is she doing today? Have we heard?”

Tim got a pained expression on his face and leaned back in his chair, looking down at his now folded hands. Had I been too honest? I didn’t mean to insult him, but didn’t we lose the big picture? Were we “reasonable”? He mumbled a few words about not realizing her condition, then said “Actually, why don’t I give Dr. Phizokovitch a call and see how she’s doing? Will you excuse me?” I left the office and let Dr. Tim make his call.

ALARA

As defined in Title 10, Section 20.1003, of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR 20.1003), ALARA is an acronym for “as low as (is) reasonably achievable,” which means making every reasonable effort to maintain exposures to ionizing radiation as far below the dose limits as practical, consistent with the purpose for which the licensed activity is undertaken, taking into account the state of technology, the economics of improvements in relation to state of technology, the economics of improvements in relation to benefits to the public health and safety, and other societal and socioeconomic considerations, and in relation to utilization of nuclear energy and licensed materials in the public interest. For additional detail, see Dose Limits for Radiation Workers.

Page Last Reviewed/Updated Tuesday, March 09, 2021