An internal Department of Energy watchdog gave Consolidated Nuclear Security a public calling-out, but no other penalty, for letting an employee at the Pantex Plant in Texas work in radioactive areas for six months last year after the contractor realized the person had lost their dosimeter, according to a report published this week.
The employee wore a dosimeter the whole time, but it was a replacement badge issued by the Bechtel National-led contractor after the worker lost the dosimeter they were supposed to be wearing.
CNS, managing Pantex and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee under a contract that runs through Sept. 30, issued a statement about the lost badge to Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor in February — but this week’s report from the Enterprise Assessments Office provides some previously undisclosed details about the incident.
For example, Pantex’s lack of onsite dosimetry processing meant that CNS did not realize that the employee’s lost badge had been sitting inside a linear accelerator room “for an extended period.”
In late January 2021, CNS checked out the Nevada National Security Site’s dosimetry analysis for the employee, whose first badge a supervisor had discovered in the linear accelerator room in July 2020. Parsing the data revealed an apparent 10 rem dose: double the 5 rem limit allowed by federal regulations, the Enterprise Assessments Office wrote.
CNS informed DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration about the irregularity shortly after discovering the big dose, telling the agency that it was “highly unlikely that the employee received the found dosimeter’s dose.” CNS issued the employee’s replacement dosimeter in late March 2020, the Enterprise Assessments Office wrote.
“CNS did not recognize the significance of finding a lost dosimeter and missed the opportunity to restrict the employee’s access to radiological areas and prevent further exposure from July 2020 through December 2020,” the office wrote in its report. “If the employee had recognized the loss and reported the lost dosimeter in real-time, the period of potential dose uncertainty would have been significantly reduced.”
