Two Savannah River Remediation workers were contaminated with beta and gamma radiation at the Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility this week, according to an official Department of Energy account of the incident.
The incident occurred Wednesday when one employee spilled a sample of liquid waste pulled from an oil drum. The sample splattered both that worker and another watching nearby in a radiological buffer area.
The technician doing the sampling “had 2,000 dpm [disintegrations per minute] Beta/Gamma contamination on their modesty clothing (shirt) and 6,000 dpm Beta/Gamma contamination on their badge lanyard,” according to an official DOE report about the incident.
The observer in the radiological buffer area had “500,000 dpm Beta/Gamma contamination on the sole of their left shoe and 50,000 dpm Beta/Gamma contamination on the sole of their right shoe,” the report says.
Savannah River Remediation is the liquid waste management contractor for the DOE site in South Carolina. A company spokesperson deferred to DOE headquarters in Washington for comment; DOE did not respond to requests for comment.
The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) has been shut down since March and is expected to be offline at least through Sept. 30 as DOE and its contractor replace a broken melter pot. DWPF turns liquid waste into more easily storable solid glass in a process known as vitrification. There remains about 35 million gallons of liquid waste at the Savannah River Site, which used to produce fissile material for Cold War weapons programs.
