RP and Chemistry Question Re Fuel Leaks

[Blacksnake66]

I'm a former operator and I&C Tech.When I was in-house at VY in 2003 we had a run with bad fuel.For a while we would have a heck of a time getting out of the Aux Bldg.We always heard it was Nobel gases and Radon clinging to use that needed to decay or bug off so we could clear the portal.I'm interested in knowing what exactly those gasses were and what if anything else was flying around the place.VY was a BWR.Does anyone know the full spectrum of what's floating around the Aux Bldg with leaking fuel?
Thanks-S

[fiveeleven]

Radon is a noble gas and it aint french. If proper FEF mitigation actions were in place then the nuclide concentrations in the aux. bldg. were Alara. The fact that you were able to clear the exit portal in a reasonable time means you were exposed to mostly short lived isotopes. The value of a complete FEF nuclide profile 17 yrs. later is minimal. The " bug off" method of decontamination must have been a VY thing.

[nowhereman]

Fission product gases of I-131 and Xenon and krypton...decaying to Cesium 135 ?  and rubidium.
At VY you must of had a X-K building, right?
At C/Y in 89 they had some really bad fuel. Bad, bad...i think I remember an 80 mrem charcoal air sample from the steam gene's. I remember reading in 2010 about that outage, something like between 1 and 10 microcuries of fp gas. Which is an absurdly number for someone ex navy. The CY management was not very forthcoming on info.
Not really funny at 4000 mpc. That's dialing the way back machine way back. Probably nothing to a DOE site.
Par for the course at CY.

[SloGlo]

I'm a former operator and I&C Tech.When I was in-house at VY in 2003 we had a run with bad fuel.For a while we would have a heck of a time getting out of the Aux Bldg.We always heard it was Nobel gases and Radon clinging to use that needed to decay or bug off so we could clear the portal.I'm interested in knowing what exactly those gasses were and what if anything else was flying around the place.VY was a BWR.Does anyone know the full spectrum of what's floating around the Aux Bldg with leaking fuel?
Thanks-S

knot shore watt the bug off protocols where. iffen yins decayed away in 30 minutes oar sew, their was probably a radon mix in there, wit yore n16. fission products ain't  going aweigh very quickly. yins gotta call up an auld bud from rad con too find out moor.

[Marlin]

their was probably a radon mix in there, wit yore n16.

N16 Not so much.

[nowhereman]

I certainly hope that N-16 comment was a typo error. Or maybe. I've got a major GCE going on.
Someone has got to talk to Chili from SES. He's got a summer class coming up.
Hi Chili!🙃

[SloGlo]

N16 Not so much.

yins gotta bee quick wit n16. butt, it will decay off fast.😉

[scotoma]

N16 decays off before it ever gets into the atmosphere. Radon and its daughters mostly come from natural sources. In Vermont, radon is prevalent in the earth and gets into houses and well water. If you shower prior to coming to work, and go directly into the RCA, you could alarm the portals when you exit. Failed fuel gives you radioactive noble gases, mostly Krypton and Xenon, (and also Iodine which is not noble, but decays to Xenon), which escape into the atmosphere. The noble gases float around and don't interact, but it is the daughters that give you the problems. Krypton has the shortest 1/2life which makes it most radioactive and decays to Ribidium. Ribidium88 is the most prevalent with an ~18 minute 1/2life. It is most significant when the Rx is critical. I'm sure that there were other things fllying around, but not in sufficient quatities to be significant. There was an RP tech assigned to vacuum people to help them clear the monitors more quickly (maybe that is "bug off", but there was one tech who said "come with me, I have to suck you off"). After S/D, the rubidium goes away. When you de-pressurize the primary system, the noble gases and Iodine leave the failed fuel bundles and concentrate in the coolant. At CY, I recall that the Xenon got up to 25 uc/ml and the Iodine was over 1 uc/ml. A 1 liter sample bottle was over 100 mR/hr. The S/G charcoal sample was 500 mR/hr. and the Iodine oozed out and crapped up the count room. I believe that in 2003, VY had only one failed element. CY had several failed elements with multiple pinhole leaks which is why it was mostly a gas problem and not an alpha problem.

[Blacksnake66]

Great stuff, except for the Scott gibberish. Must've been at the pub when they responded.
The N-16 shine is daily BWR life.Bug off is my term, loitering around the portals, trying to get out, bugging the RP techs.(I personally think you Rps are more nuclear nerds than us twidgets)
Bug off, is getting the hell back to my shop term before management thinks you're F'in off.
They were a great bunch up there at VY- Terri, Tony B, others and that hot red head who visited us for outages.Radon I know from my old monitoring days, temp inversions, etc.
What I'm interested in is the stuff I used to have to track as a reactor operator- my iodine and xenon transients.And the other stuff I didn't have to care too much about that circulated in the coolant.
If this gets out, and in a BWR, it doesn't take much to go from primary to atmosphere, at least MY atmosphere,I want to know what I might have gotten exposed to.
I presently have thyroid cancer. The thyroid is a sponge for iodine. When there's an accident we supply pillsto fill the thyroid with non radioactive iodine to prevent uptake.
In reflecting back on my career, I've been around a bunch of different sites and exposures;  open heads, fuel pools, sampling, etc.As I get ready to have my thyroid removed next month at the VA, I'm wondering if that bad fuel was the likely exposure to get the cancer started.
I remember a story after I left VY in 2004 to start contracting. Another site had bad fuel and one of the operators in the Aux bldg who was a health freakdropped dead in a couple months from an aggressive cancer that hit him out of the blue.
My wondering is this, Are utilities doing what they should to make sure employees are not getting uptakes of especially dangerous fission products?
I felt at VY we were letting it run out quietly. I'd sit there for a half an hour and sometimes changing clothes to get out.
I resorted to spraying myself with anti static spray before going in and watching what clothes, cotton vs polyester I'd wear etc before going in too.There was never much alarm about it.But all these years later I'm wondering if I should have been more cautious in my youth.

[fiveeleven]

Sorry about your health issues. The individual and collective knowledge on this site on the technical aspects of pretty much the entire spectrum of all things nuclear is for sure impressive. In your situation, to obtain a more comprehensive assessment that could mean something, you would need to talk to an attorney who specializes in radiation related illness. Good luck on your upcoming procedure.

[Marlin]

Great stuff, except for the Scott gibberish. Must've been at the pub when they responded.
The N-16 shine is daily BWR life.Bug off is my term, loitering around the portals, trying to get out, bugging the RP techs.(I personally think you Rps are more nuclear nerds than us twidgets)
Bug off, is getting the hell back to my shop term before management thinks you're F'in off.
They were a great bunch up there at VY- Terri, Tony B, others and that hot red head who visited us for outages.Radon I know from my old monitoring days, temp inversions, etc.
What I'm interested in is the stuff I used to have to track as a reactor operator- my iodine and xenon transients.And the other stuff I didn't have to care too much about that circulated in the coolant.
If this gets out, and in a BWR, it doesn't take much to go from primary to atmosphere, at least MY atmosphere,I want to know what I might have gotten exposed to.
I presently have thyroid cancer. The thyroid is a sponge for iodine. When there's an accident we supply pillsto fill the thyroid with non radioactive iodine to prevent uptake.
In reflecting back on my career, I've been around a bunch of different sites and exposures;  open heads, fuel pools, sampling, etc.As I get ready to have my thyroid removed next month at the VA, I'm wondering if that bad fuel was the likely exposure to get the cancer started.
I remember a story after I left VY in 2004 to start contracting. Another site had bad fuel and one of the operators in the Aux bldg who was a health freakdropped dead in a couple months from an aggressive cancer that hit him out of the blue.
My wondering is this, Are utilities doing what they should to make sure employees are not getting uptakes of especially dangerous fission products?
I felt at VY we were letting it run out quietly. I'd sit there for a half an hour and sometimes changing clothes to get out.
I resorted to spraying myself with anti static spray before going in and watching what clothes, cotton vs polyester I'd wear etc before going in too.There was never much alarm about it.But all these years later I'm wondering if I should have been more cautious in my youth.

Okay, time for a more direct answer. It is not impossible that the cancer was caused by radiation exposure but it is unlikely. Radioactive iodine is used for diagnosis and therapy (kill it off). These exposures are much higher than occupational doses permitted in a power plant and are considered acceptable risk for your health. Ironically you may be treated this way if not already.

Radioactive Iodine (Radioiodine) Therapy for Thyroid Cancer

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroid-cancer/treating/radioactive-iodine.html

Power plants are not the business with the highest occupational exposure on average that honor belongs to flight crews. Four millirem for each trip across the US.

Aircrew Safety and Health Cosmic Ionizing Radiation

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aircrew/cosmicionizingradiation.html

Relative risk from cancer is not known for low level radiation and it is doubtful that many estimates that claim there is you may see outside of the Health Physics Society or NRC are accurate because of assumptions that are not that realistic.

Radiation Exposure and Cancer

"Although radiation may cause cancer at high doses and high dose rates, public health data do not absolutely establish the occurrence of cancer following exposure to low doses and dose rates — below about 10,000 mrem (100 mSv). "

https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/rad-exposure-cancer.html

[Bonds 25]

As close to zero percent as possible that VY's failed fuel had anything to do with your thyroid issue. This line of thinking is exactly why Hanford pays out $100,000+ to workers who say that the 100 mrem they got back in 1965 is the reason they now have leukemia at 80 years old.

[scotoma]

The air in the reactor plant is monitored for radionuclides. There is a continuous air monitor (CAM) in the RB, and AOG. It monitors particulate, iodine, and noble gas. Air samples were routinely taken. The coolant goes through the reactor at high pressure and into the condenser at vacuum. The gases in the coolant come out of solution in the condenser and get suck over to the AOG where they go through filter banks and charcoal beds. There is still plenty of N16 in the AOG, but it is still inside the piping. The gas then sent to the stack through an underground delay path. I seriously doubt that you were exposed to much Iodine at VY. Even at CY, most of the Iodine would have been contained. They had CAMs and air samples were taken routinely throughout the buildings. If anybody was exposed, they were given whole body counts to detect (gamma emitters) internal depositions. If alpha was suspected, fecal samples were taken daily until the alpha was no longer present.   

[RDTroja]

... but there was one tech who said "come with me, I have to suck you off").

Hey! I was at that outage!

[RDTroja]

I think you would have a better chance of getting struck by lightning every day for a week than the chance that any Power Plant Iodine caused your cancer. Not impossible, just highly unlikely. There are WAY too many other causes with much higher probabilities.

[Rennhack]

I think you would have a better chance of getting struck by lightning every day for a week than the chance that any Power Plant Iodine caused your cancer. Not impossible, just highly unlikely. There are WAY too many other causes with much higher probabilities.

That depends on your age (The younger you are, the longer you have to develop an issue, people over 40 have a very low change of developing issues.), and how much you are exposed to.  If there were a meltdown, and enough escaped.... then its the primary radionuclide of concern.

[GLW]

That depends on your age (The younger you are, the longer you have to develop an issue, people over 40 have a very low change of developing issues.), and how much you are exposed to.  If there were a meltdown, and enough escaped.... then its the primary radionuclide of concern.

VY melted down

[Rennhack]

VY melted down

Roger said 'ANY Power Plant'.

[Blacksnake66]

Ok.
Did some of you not read my post?
I was an operator, a reactor operator and an I&C Tech.
I've been through nuclear operator training twice, plus nuke school.
I've worked on all these systems, calibrating, repairing, upgrading them, planning and writing procedures.
The system and theory review isn't necessary.
And the nonsense about low dosage in nuclear versus flying doesn't work with me.
I've been under vessel running from a stuck incore probe that popped out and lit the place up w RP yelling GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!
Hundreds of Rads, finger monitoring, bubble suit.
4 mrem a day for me at VY was reason for my supervisors to ask, Did you do anything today?
Radon here and there is normal. Sitting for an hour at the RP check point to decay isn't typical. We had bad fuel.
Thyroid cancer is primarily from radiation exposure.
I've had lots more than a pilot getting 4 mrem per day, working on RHR, PZR spray valves or rad waste I'd get close to 100 mrem on a job.
Others got even more. Mechanics working on steam generators comes to mind.

Iodine 131 half life of 8 days.
"Due to its mode of beta decay, Iodine-131 is notable for causing mutation and death in cells that it penetrates, and other cells up to several millimeters away. For this reason, high doses of the isotope are sometimes less dangerous than low doses, since they tend to kill thyroid tissues that would otherwise become cancerous as a result of the radiation."

My concern is that we can be cavalier and insular in the nuclear industry.
When we had bad fuel, we had no special briefing (my I&C supervisor was an idiot), no extra precautions, and it was just something others were dealing with.
In hindsight, we should've been taking more precautions to ensure personnel were better informed and protected.

I'm not looking for damages anywhere because I'm not like that, the VA here in Florida has been fantastic,
and frankly its origin can't be proved, especially since I've been around so much, military radars, other numerous other nuclear sites,
and in the last few years I had an obscene amount of dental X-rays that made me as uncomfortable as the VY bad fuel days.

My interest was from hearing from RP techs since this site is where most of you hang out.
Maybe this is an area for some improvement?

Low dose of I-131 is very bad and it should be very specifically mitigated.

I'd write a CR but I'm out of the industry for a while now.
Maybe one of you guys or gals can.

Anyway, love you guys and the hard work you do.
Thanks for the information and feedback.

Stay safe.
S

[Marlin]

Ok.
Did some of you not read my post?
I was an operator, a reactor operator and an I&C Tech.
I've been through nuclear operator training twice, plus nuke school.
I've worked on all these systems, calibrating, repairing, upgrading them, planning and writing procedures.
The system and theory review isn't necessary.
And the nonsense about low dosage in nuclear versus flying doesn't work with me.
I've been under vessel running from a stuck incore probe that popped out and lit the place up w RP yelling GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!
Hundreds of Rads, finger monitoring, bubble suit.
4 mrem a day for me at VY was reason for my supervisors to ask, Did you do anything today?
Radon here and there is normal. Sitting for an hour at the RP check point to decay isn't typical. We had bad fuel.
Thyroid cancer is primarily from radiation exposure.
I've had lots more than a pilot getting 4 mrem per day, working on RHR, PZR spray valves or rad waste I'd get close to 100 mrem on a job.
Others got even more. Mechanics working on steam generators comes to mind.

Iodine 131 half life of 8 days.
"Due to its mode of beta decay, Iodine-131 is notable for causing mutation and death in cells that it penetrates, and other cells up to several millimeters away. For this reason, high doses of the isotope are sometimes less dangerous than low doses, since they tend to kill thyroid tissues that would otherwise become cancerous as a result of the radiation."

My concern is that we can be cavalier and insular in the nuclear industry.
When we had bad fuel, we had no special briefing (my I&C supervisor was an idiot), no extra precautions, and it was just something others were dealing with.
In hindsight, we should've been taking more precautions to ensure personnel were better informed and protected.

I'm not looking for damages anywhere because I'm not like that, the VA here in Florida has been fantastic,
and frankly its origin can't be proved, especially since I've been around so much, military radars, other numerous other nuclear sites,
and in the last few years I had an obscene amount of dental X-rays that made me as uncomfortable as the VY bad fuel days.

My interest was from hearing from RP techs since this site is where most of you hang out.
Maybe this is an area for some improvement?

Low dose of I-131 is very bad and it should be very specifically mitigated.

I'd write a CR but I'm out of the industry for a while now.
Maybe one of you guys or gals can.

Anyway, love you guys and the hard work you do.
Thanks for the information and feedback.

Stay safe.
S

Tried to give you some incite on relative risk. Iodine is part of your equivalent whole body exposure and as long as it is not over any administrative limits your risk is extremely low (about nil). I too was a Navy Nuke (ELT) have been a rad tech, rad supervisor, rad engineer, safety analyst, worked in hazardous material management as a specialist/engineer, safety specialist, and passed the NRRPT in the 80s. Yes I may be a little blase about irrational fear of radiation and it's effects but it has a good a foundation. Not sure what being an operator or I&C tech has to do with your expertise in health physics it is not in evidence in your posts being exposed is not the same as being educated.

[GLW]

okay, my turn,...

...They were a great bunch up there at VY- Terri, Tony B, others and that hot red head who visited us for outages.Radon I know from my old monitoring days, temp inversions, etc.....

...My concern is that we can be cavalier and insular in the nuclear industry.
When we had bad fuel, we had no special briefing (my I&C supervisor was an idiot), no extra precautions, and it was just something others were dealing with.
In hindsight, we should've been taking more precautions to ensure personnel were better informed and protected....

IF what you state is true THEN Terri, Tony B, others and that hot red head who visited you for outages were not a great bunch - they f'in failed you,...

you have a serious beef with them because it is their job (even if it means moving into protected employee status) to assure that rad protection precautions, information, monitoring and pre-job planning were adequate within the regulatory requirements, license conditions, radpro plan, procedures and the best practices of EPRI and INPO,...

the proper vetting and implementation of ALARA and RADCON is not the I&C Supervisors purview,...

....and frankly its origin can't be proved, especially since I've been around so much, military radars, other numerous other nuclear sites,
and in the last few years I had an obscene amount of dental X-rays that made me as uncomfortable as the VY bad fuel days.....

IF this is also true THEN anyone responding to you on an internet forum board with a definitive or even a possible cause and effect for your medical condition is a charlatan masquerading as a Health Physics professional,...

your listing of your lifetime possibilities for occupational or non-occupational sources of radiation exposure reveal that you are focused on the most stringently regulated and controlled occupational source, and giving only passing mention of the others, and those others are notorious for numerous, documented events which include lack of monitoring, lack of compliance, lack of controls and failure to meet mandated verifications,...

....My interest was from hearing from RP techs since this site is where most of you hang out.
Maybe this is an area for some improvement?....

RP techs do not perform dose reconstruction or stochastic effects probabilities,...

and anyone on these boards supporting your contentions concerning your exposure at VY is not an RP tech or Health Physicist,...

the term poser does come to mind,....

OBTW - if you're a troll thank you, I have not exercised my bitch slap keyboard for quite awhile and it was getting dusty,...

[scotoma]

Iodine-131 is a beta and gamma emitter. The beta is only a concern if you have a serious uptake of iodine and it collects in the thyroid. When you are working in the plant, air samples are taken. Iodine would be identified. You would be in supplied air because there is no protection factor for iodine with a NP respirator. If an uptake was suspected, you would be given a whole body count and the iodine would have been identified because it is a gamma emitter. Low doses of iodine 131 are not very bad. Dose is dose is dose. If it is from external sources, gamma is the concern and when critical neutrons. Alpha and beta are not an external concern. Beta is a concern if you have skin contamination, but only to the skin. Therefore beta radiation will not cause death or mutations to cells that are several millimenters away. Iodine 131 in the thyroid does kill cells, but in order for you to have received enough iodine to be of concern, there would have to be several failed fuel bundles and a major breach of the primary system. When a doctor prescribes radioactive iodine to kill thyroid cells, the patient will be over 100 mR/hr on contact with the throat. We had an engineer at VY who had the iodine treatment and came to the checkpoint to tell us. ( He was supposed to tell us before he had the treatment and stay offsite, but we didn't tell him to tell us and he forgot that we have telephones). We knew he was coming because he alarmed every portal monitor and frisker on his travel path from up to 20 feet away. The iodine was also oozing out of his pores, so we had to do some decontamination as well. There was another guy whose wife had the iodine treatment, and he set off the monitors when he got to work just from the contamination he got from being with his wife. Therefore, I don't think that iodine is the source of your illness. Chronic exposure to external radiation has been correlated to some types of cancer, but I'm not a doctor, or a lawyer, so I can't help you there.

[fiveeleven]

Posers and charlatans be damned. This dude gets his thyroid whacked by a VA whacker regardless.

[Blacksnake66]

Thanks. That's all I was looking for. Some serious feedback, or ideas on my time around leaking fuel.
I didn't ask back then. I took things cavalier and for granted.The youthful sense of being indestructible.

Tony B and the crew there were great.
My interest is if the procedures and processes are adequate.I've been around the industry for 25 years, there are always room for improvements.

Thanks again,S