The Nuclear Regulatory Commission aims by the end of August to decide on 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 NRC official noted the schedule at the end of a teleconference Tuesday that gave the Idaho Falls, Idaho, nuclear medicine company an opportunity to provide information and discuss its perspective on the two potential breaches cited in a June inspection report from the federal agency.
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’s preliminary findings derived from a May 2, 2019, incident in which International Isotopes personnel unintentionally cut into a radioactive 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 January 2021 for cleaning.
The work was being done under a federal radiological security program, contracted by the management prime for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Source recovery had been one of International Isotopes’ primary business lines, mainly on contract to the Department of Energy.
In its inspection report, the NRC noted that International Isotopes experienced a similar mishap during a source removal operation at its home facility in December 2018. However, it failed to capitalize on a corrective action report issued prior to the 2019 event.
The written procedure for the Seattle 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.
Further, the NRC said the license under which the job was conducted specifically only authorized removal of the source holder from the irradiator device, rather than the source from its holder. The regulator also said it had not authorized International Isotopes to cut the source within the mobile hot cell intended to prevent radioactive contamination.
International Isotopes President and CEO Steve Laflin emphasized the complexity of the operation during this week’s pre-decisional enforcement conference, including use of six video cameras, but said the company does not dispute the NRC’s first preliminary finding. However, he added there was a different interpretation over the conditions of the license as laid out in the second apparent violation. Management believed it was authorized to remove the source from the holder, he said – in fact, that would have been necessary to fit the source into its transport container.
“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.”
The company has taken a number of corrective actions since the event, including the full termination of field service operations, according to Laflin. Reviews and risk assessments have been conducted for similar operations conducted at the International Isotopes facility in Idaho Falls. Management is also striving to add independent reviews to its operations – Laflin noted the NRC’s finding that staff at the small company write procedures and prepare risk assessments for work they then end up doing. “We’ve taken a stab at trying to prevent that and to get a better review of our processes and procedures.”
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 over $350,000 in internal costs from its recovery, according to his presentation.
In a May notice, the Department of Health cited International Isotopes with two violations of the state code: performing the source removal without a state radioactive air emission license and failing to control the release of radioactive material once the source was breached.
Each violation carries a maximum penalty of $10,000 per day.
The Department of Health did not say by deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor whether it had finalized and levied the penalty.
In a letter this week, a University of Washington official urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider the scope of the impact of the May 2019 incident in deciding what steps to take against International Isotopes.
“The University believes this accident was easily preventable and would not have occurred if International Isotopes had implemented a robust safety culture,” wrote Katia Harb, senior director for the UW Environmental Health & Safety Department. “Also, that the scope of the contamination was more widespread because International Isotopes was not prepared to respond to the type or scale of event that occurred.”
The facility was used for lab research, HIV clinical testing, and medical education, Harb said. That all stopped on May 2, 2019. The shutdown of the HVAC system led to overheating of freezers in laboratories “and loss of irreplaceable scientific specimens under study,” she added. Roughly 35 labs had to be relocated.
Remediation of the research building is expected to cost $40 million to $60 million, paid by the National Nuclear Security Administration. It is being managed by Perma-Fix Environmental Services, of Atlanta.
