On 1/10/2017 3:58 PM, Huge wrote:
On 2017-01-10, newshound wrote:
On 1/10/2017 10:46 AM, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

[24 lines snipped]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe_zzTQFV3o


Very interesting. Looks remarkably similar to the pile cap region of a
shut down Magnox reactor; probably tidier than many, in fact.

Interesting that they wear face masks there. In our C2 areas, we'd wear
the same sort of overshoes, but also boiler suits without pockets
(coveralls in our terminology) and rubber gloves over the cotton ones,
but not face masks.

I'd be worried about inhaling a fuel flea in that case. He specifically
mentions them at one point - where they find the hot spot on the fuel
"spindles" (or whatever it they're called.)


You certainly would not want to inhale that source of 2 R/hour, if it
was loose particulate. But, you can normally collect loose contamination
very effectively with a good vacuum cleaner. Since it was near the top
of the part which is mechanically handled by the fuel machine, I'd guess
it was a particle which had become trapped in a crevice during handling.
It's not necessarily fuel, it might be a bit of graphite (impurities
become activated in the high neutron flux), or a bit of metal swarf or
iron oxide, again activated by the neutron flux. The point is, it was a
single "hot spot" which they had located relatively easily. My guess is
that these parts had been cleaned somehow and cleared as "low active"
before storing in that relatively secure space.

If you do ingest or inhale something nasty like this, it is normally not
difficult to detect afterwards from the gamma radiation. There are two
exceptions, one is a few alpha sources, most notably Polonium 210, as
used to murder Litvinenco, the other is some soft beta sources like
Sulfur 36 (iirc) which only produce weak gammas. Site health physicists
are well aware of the particular issues with beta sources. Significant
"free" alpha sources are not normally found on nuclear power plant
except in the presence of fission products because they arise from
damaged irradiated fuel.