A plutonium spill at the National Institute of Standards and Technology campus in Boulder has generated numerous concerns among federal, state and local officials, a hearing Tuesday in Washington revealed.
Those concerns include the amount of radiation individuals were exposed to, the amount of radioactive materials released into the Boulder sewer system and procedures at the Boulder facility, particularly those related to the handling and storage of radioactive material, said Charles Miller, director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Federal and State Materials. He spoke before the Technology and Innovation Subcommittee of the House Science Committee.
The city of Boulder blasted NIST’s failure to contain the plutonium spill and the federal agency’s first reports that the spill was localized.
“NIST initially indicated that the spill was contained with no contamination outside the affected laboratory room and the adjacent hallway area,” Stephanie Grainger, interim city manager, said Tuesday in a statement.
“However, days later, the city learned that the plutonium was not contained and had been released into the city’s sanitary sewer system.”
Boulder “finds the lack of containment facilities and compliance with safety protocols unacceptable,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., a member of the House Science Committee, said that when the release of the plutonium occurred, NIST researchers were working on a project to help better detect “dirty bombs” and “protect our nation.
“That’s very admirable work,” said Udall. “But it has to be done in a safe way.”
“I asked at the end of the hearing that NIST, along with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, seriously consider releasing all those hazardous and radioactive materials that NIST has on site or utilizes as long as there was not a national security concern that might be compromised,” said Udall.
During the hearing, James Turner, NIST’s interim director, told the subcommittee that the “incident and the conditions that permitted the incident to take place are unacceptable.”
“NIST’s safety culture is deficient,” he said.
In a letter to the subcommittee, Grainger said that Boulder has and will incur expenses to test and monitor the sewer system to assess the impact of the plutonium discharge and wants NIST to pay the testing costs.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
