Serious big nuclear pollution crisis not Fukushima toxin swallowed

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Hanford nuclear workers swallowed radiation particles, test positive for contamination – report
Published time: 5 Aug, 2017 01:42
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Hanford nuclear workers swallowed radiation particles, test positive for contamination – report
© HanfordPlateau / YouTube
Several of the workers tasked with one of the largest nuclear cleanup efforts in the world have tested positive for radiation contamination. Out of the fraction of workers tested, 20 percent were found with “internal exposures.”

On June 8, more than 300 workers at the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP), which produced two-thirds of the nation’s plutonium “buttons” during the Cold War, were ordered to “take cover” after Continuous Air Monitoring (CAM) alarms at the facility detected airborne radiation, according to a press release.

Veteran Hanford worker says they knew event like this would happen because CH2M Hill "rushing the demolition." & "not listening to workers"
— Susannah Frame (@SFrameK5) June 8, 2017

The incident was not unexpected. One worker at the nuclear weapons facility told KING reporter Susannah Frame that CH2M Hill, an engineering consultant company contracted by the US Department of Energy, was “rushing the demolition” and “not listening to workers.”

Hanford officials said the order to take cover was merely a “precautionary” safety measure. Officials with CH2M Hill said the contamination was “not considered harmful.”

On Thursday, KING published an internal CH2M Hill email from July 21 that said the company issued bioassay kits, which detects the amount of radiation in the body, to more than 300 employees who were at the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant when the CAM alarms went off in June.

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http://nwnewsnetwork.org/post/contractor-confirms-several-low-level-plutonium-exposures-hanford

Contractor Confirms Several Low-Level Plutonium Exposures At Hanford
By Anna King • Aug 3, 2017
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File photo of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford prior to demolition.
File photo of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford prior to demolition.
U.S. Department of Energy

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Back in June, there was an emergency at the Hanford nuclear site where workers were ordered to take cover. A sensor was detecting airborne radioactive particles.

Now KING-TV reports several workers have tested positive for those particles inside their bodies.

The workers were demolishing the Plutonium Finishing Plant. The building was used to make plutonium nuggets about the size of hockey pucks for bombs in the Cold War. Hanford contractor CH2M Hill won’t comment on exactly how many positive tests have come back, but several workers have eaten radioactive particles. ?

That means workers likely breathed in dust with small amounts of plutonium, then breathed the dust out. The particles got hung up in their saliva and they swallowed. CH2M Hill is now testing about 300 workers’ feces. The contractor expects to be done with the testing in six weeks. ?

A CH2M Hill spokesman wouldn’t answer any questions about whether these workers who did test positive would have additional testing on their bodies—particularly their lungs.

The federal contractor said all exposed workers have less than a millirem in them detected so far. And experts on the health effects of plutonium say that’s about the amount of radiation you’d get from a cross-country flight. ?

CH2M Hill said it has developed new plans to help limit exposures in the future like keeping more dust down by spraying water and a sticky solution and sucking air into a ventilation system on the building during demo.

?All of the workers who’ve ingested plutonium will have this information recorded as part of their official Hanford work health history.