Nukewatch Winter Quarterly 2019-2020
During a two-day-long cross-country road trip, two shipping containers on a flatbed truck were radioactively contaminated on the outside, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said in a Nov. 22 violation notice sent to Westinghouse Corp., noting “the violation was more than minor.” According to the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, Wash., “Radioactive contamination on the outside of the containers exceeded that allowed by the US Department of Transportation, the NRC said.” The cylinders started from Westinghouse’s uranium fuel production factory in Columbia, South Carolina, and the contamination on the tanks was noticed when they arrived at Framatome Inc. in Richland, Washington, according to the NRC. The violation notice said the cylinders contained “residue from uranium hexafluoride” (UF6), a toxic, radioactive material used in reactor fuel production. “The contaminated cylinders, shipped on a flatbed trailer that took two days to reach Washington, didn’t endanger the public, the NRC says,” the Herald reported. But the NRC’s “all clear” raised questions about possible exposure experienced by the truck drivers, and ignores the potential exposure of passengers or pedestrians near the flatbed at red lights, in traffic jams, at filling stations, or in parking lots stopped at along the way by the flatbed. UF6 reacts with water or water vapor and forms deadly hydrogen fluoride and a uranium-fluoride. Consequently, leaking or spilled UF6 on the cylinder could have reacted with moisture in the air causing additional exposure hazards. —Savannah River Site Watch; and Tri-City Herald, Nov. 29, 2019, the State (Columbia, SC), Oct. 22, 2018
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