The Nuclear Regulatory Commission aims by the end of August to decide on potential enforcement measures for apparent license and regulatory violations by International Isotopes that contributed to the release of cesium-137 last year at a hospital facility in Seattle.
An agency official noted the schedule at the end of a teleconference Tuesday with the Idaho Falls, Idaho, nuclear medicine company. Mary Muessle, director of the Division of Nuclear Materials Safety in NRC Region IV, cautioned that no decisions have been made on any action, which under agency escalated enforcement policy can include civil penalties or modification, suspension, or revocation of a license.
The NRC findings described in a June inspection report derived from a May 2, 2019, incident in which International Isotopes personnel unintentionally cut into a sealed source while removing it from a blood irradiator at the Research and Training Building for the University of Washington’s Harborview Medical Center. Cesium-137 contaminated 13 people and seven floors at the facility, which remains closed until at least 2021 for cleaning.
The written procedure for the job instructed International Isotopes to cut a source holder within a mobile hot cell with a power tool to remove a sealed source – but the company’s procedures did not identify potential safety and engineering controls needed in case of breach, a violation of NRC regulations. Furthermore, the NRC license under which the job was conducted specifically only authorized removal of the source holder from the device, rather than the source itself from its holder.
International Isotopes CEO Steve Laflin said the company does not dispute the NRC’s first preliminary finding, but he said there was a different interpretation over the conditions of the license as laid out in the second apparent violation.
“I think it’s important to appreciate that we believed we were following the license conditions,” Laflin said during the call. “We were not going rogue and going beyond what we thought the license authorized by doing this work. It was our understanding that it was allowed.”
Laflin said International Isotopes has already paid a steep price for the accident, including anticipated civil penalties from the Washington state Department of Health and the full shutdown of its source recovery business. More than $1 million in field service contracts have been terminated and the company has spent over $350,000 in its recovery, according to his presentation.
