October 25, 2000
Workers were unprotected in contaminated buildings
Memo says training performed without gear to prevent exposure
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0010/25/001025risk.html
By JAMES MALONE, The Courier-Journal

PADUCAH, Ky. -- Security guards and firefighters at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant during the 1980s and possibly the early 1990s conducted anti-terrorist training inside heavily contaminated buildings without protective clothing or equipment, a plant memo obtained by The Courier-Journal shows.

"The training included accessing the rafters, roof areas, and crawling on the floors plus other exposed surfaces that were, and some still are, highly contaminated," the memo says. Many of the production and maintenance buildings have been closed, some because of their high level of radioactivity.

The safety personnel wore no coveralls, gloves or booties and did not use respirators to protect themselves from radiation, says the memo written Thursday by health physicist Ray Carroll.

They wore their uniforms, and their dirty clothing was sent out to a commercial laundry or taken home to be washed, the memo says.

Carroll recommended notifying off-site laundries where the uniforms were washed that the clothing may have been contaminated. He also said there should be an offer extended to survey the homes and the affected laundries for contamination.

"To my knowledge, there has been no effort to account for the internal dose these individuals might have received," Carroll said in his memo.

He called for an investigation to identify the people who might be affected, learn where and how they trained and to determine the extent of contamination of other hazards in these areas, including possibly asbestos and beryllium, a metal that causes fatal lung disease.

The memo has been forwarded to the U.S. Department of Energy because the events took place before the United States Enrichment Corp.'s leasing of production facilities at the plant, said Georg-Ann Look-ofsky, a USEC spokeswoman. The Energy Department said it is reviewing the memo, which it received last week.

Guard and firefighter uniforms are now laundered at the plant, Lookofsky said.