Minn. Nuclear Workers Exposed to Radiation

[seriousstan]

An accidental release of radioactive gas at a nuclear plant in southeastern Minnesota exposed about 100 workers to low levels of radiation last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

The Prairie Island plant was shut down for maintenance and refueling at the time, and no radiation was released outdoors, said Jan Strasma, commission spokesman.

The workers were wearing protective gear when they were exposed to low levels of radioactive iodine on Friday, said Arline Datu, spokeswoman for Nuclear Management Co. Most received 10 to 20 millirems of radiation, about the same as a dental X-ray. They were decontaminated and allowed to go home, she said.

Nuclear Management Co., which operates Xcel Energy's nuclear plants, said residual radioactive gas in some equipment was inadvertently released without being routed through a filtering system.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/09/D8HGDVE02.html

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I hope all those guys have good health insurance.

I would not trust the "spokeswoman" as far as I could throw her.

[ThomCat]

2. I hope it's good LONG TERM health insurance

that won't dry up and disappear.

[TheMadMonk]

4. I possibly wouldn't either. However, I to a degree trust...

the reported dosage. Most if not virtually all workers know how to read their own dosiometers (sp?). If it was a dental x-ray it was a dental x-ray. Or about: 4 months in Denver, a trip across the Pacific. The level of exposure currently considered medically acceptable is equivalent to four hundred and fifty such exposures over the course of a working year.

If every industry took the same care with their materials safe-handling procedures as the nuclear, a great many dangerous polutants of all kinds would be a thing of the past.

Every industry has it's unique and overt and insidious way of killing us. Benzene (C6H6) gives kids leukimia. Mercury causes insanity and deformity. Burning coal, and other fossil fuels destroys lung tissue. The price of living is dying, and the safety record of the nuclear industry is second to none. Coal alone is reckoned to count for somewhere in the vicinity of 700,000 foreshortened lives per year, either directly in physical misshaps or through exposure to emitted pollutants. This will rapidy surpass a million as China and India come fully online.

Your ire would be better directed to raising the bar for the "Acceptable Ccolatteral Damage" in virtually any other industry than preaching to the choir in the nuclear.

The worst nuclear accident to date, at an extreme stretch, might approach the equvalent of two months of fossil fuel burning, spread over a considerable period of time. Emerging technologies are begining to seriously tackle the problem of minimising and even "burning" waste products.

[951-Riverside]

3. You get exposed to more radiation flying on a plane

...this is what they always say *smirk*

[Sub Atomic]

5. When I first glanced at your username, I saw "Serious Tan"

and I was a bit put off.

Now that I've read your true username, it made me laugh.

Anyway, I was a nuclear mechanic on a submarine in the Navy.

Their exposure was minimal.

Working with nuclear material you acknowledge and know the risks of a potential accident.

I'm glad they didn't experience a more dangerous dose.