More than a quarter of a century has passed since the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and we all somehow forgot that the "peaceful atom" in certain situations can be deadly for a person, especially if he is in inept and inexperienced hands. And when it comes to irresponsibility in the handling of radioactive materials, comments here are completely redundant.
The cost of slovenliness
Industrial enterprises now use thousands of small radiation sources. Usually it is a small amount of radioactive material (most often cesium-137), placed in a lead-impervious casing for radiation. These sources are used in various monitoring and measuring instruments, in medical devices, in research laboratories, and so on. Occasional radiation incidents are usually associated with the loss or theft of a capsule with a radioactive substance. But sometimes this happens due to direct mismanagement.
Here are just a few examples. In 1994, a fire broke out on one of the rectification columns of the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery. Later it became clear that the high temperature on the radiation level gauge located on this column melted the protective shell. As a result, a radiation source was opened, creating a high radiation background around it. All this was discovered during a routine inspection, about two months after the fire. The radiation level in the specified area reached 1 X-ray per hour (100 thousand times higher than natural). It's good that no one worked on the convoy all this time, and therefore there were no victims of the incident. The special brigade of the Radon combine dismantled the source and buried it at its enterprise. Subsequent inspections showedthat immediately after that, in the area of the ill-fated column, a normal background radiation was restored.
In the same year, another dramatic incident occurred at the Nova enterprise in Novokuibyshevsk. The woman-defectoscopist, who worked with the radiation device, committed negligence - and as a result, the capsule with the radionuclide fell out of the protective shell. The woman took the capsule with her bare hands and put it back into the insulating casing, but it was too late. The inspector received a radiation burn of his hand and was hospitalized. Fortunately, the dose of radiation she received was not so great, and soon the woman recovered and was able to continue working.
The first Soviet radiologists
Promotional video:
Labor veteran Vladimir Khavin, who has dealt with radioactive isotopes in his work for more than 40 years, learned firsthand how negligence and sloppiness can turn out when working with emitting materials half a century ago.
- In the late 50s, after graduating from a vocational school, I got a job as a simple technician in the gas trust in the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara), - Vladimir Solomonovich recalls. - And in 1961 I was offered to go to Leningrad to master a new specialty. Then, during the construction of new gas pipelines, for the first time, a new radiographic method for monitoring the quality of welded seams began to be widely used, which urgently required specialists-radiographers. Half a century ago, I was a 26-year-old young man, full of strength and energy, and therefore immediately agreed to get a new and promising profession.
In the same 1961, Khavin was included in the very first group in the USSR at the educational center of the Glavleningradstroy trust, which studied in the city on the Neva the difficult and dangerous craft of a radiographer-controller. After graduating from these courses in the same year, he received an official admission to radiography of all types of industrial equipment with the right to issue an expert opinion. Thus, as it later turned out, Vladimir Khavin became the very first professional in Samara who had a permit to work with radioactive materials.
The management of the Gorgaz trust, having received at its disposal a specialist of such a rare profession at that time, immediately set about creating the first departmental radiographic laboratory in the city.
- At the first stage, of course, we had a lot of difficulties, - complains Vladimir Solomonovich. - One of them is the complete absence of factory-made flaw detectors. Therefore, in the first years of work, we had to make such devices ourselves. How? It's very simple. Radioactive isotopes were prescribed from Moscow - for example, cobalt-60. You take such a radiating piece with long tweezers and put it in a bronze or brass tube, seal it, and only then place it in a lead protective container.
Now they will probably tell me that it's just crazy to work with isotopes without special protection. But then, of course, we were not at all going to recklessly take risks, but clearly controlled the level of exposure for each employee using a dosimeter similar to a pencil. A person can receive no more than 17 micro-roentgen per day. If one of us was exposed to more than this norm, he was suspended for a week from working with radioactive materials. Therefore, in my radiographic department, over the years of operation, there have not been any major incidents.
But one day Khavin still had to deal with a man who had suffered very seriously from the destructive effect of the "peaceful atom". In the same 1961, when the young specialist had just started organizing his laboratory, a 22-year-old NDT inspector Yuri Vorobyov, who worked in a construction trust, came to him. This organization carried out installation work on the territory of a machine-building plant in the closed village of Vintai, and Vorobyov, using a home-made flaw detector, examined the pipelines built by workers.
So, the visitor complained that he could not get pictures of the welds. Khavin, as a certified specialist, immediately suspected that a capsule with emitting powder was depressurized in his flaw detector. But then, he suggested, the area must have been radioactively contaminated. And already in those years, the sanitary-epidemiological service was engaged in the investigation of accidents of this kind, where Khavin sent the defectoscopist.
Buried radiation
The author learned the end of this story from Vladimir Rubin, an engineer-physicist of the radiation hygiene department of the Samara Regional Center for Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance.
“I was a direct witness to those events half a century ago,” Rubin recalls. - We found that the technician often drove the device in inappropriate conditions, sometimes even on passing vehicles, and as a result, an ampoule containing radioactive cesium-137 actually broke in this handicraft device. On the way, the powder gradually spilled out until the capsule was completely empty. That is why the Ista flaw detector stopped receiving radiographic images. And when Vorobyov himself had just entered our radiological laboratory, all the included dosimeters immediately sounded. This is how we learned about this radiation accident, which took two months to liquidate.
During those few days, during which cesium-137 powder poured from the protective capsule, this inexperienced defectoscopist managed to contaminate his own apartment in Kuibyshev, his brother's apartment in Stavropol (now Togliatti), a dorm room in Vintai, where he periodically stayed, as well as factory workshops, which he examined with his flaw detector. The radiation levels at the points listed above were very high - sometimes tens of thousands of times higher than the natural background.
For the burial of all materials contaminated by Vorobyov that were collected, a pit was dug outside the village of Dubovy Umet, eight meters long, four meters wide and six meters deep. The bottom and walls of the pit were covered with a thick layer of concrete with waterproofing. In 1963, the first burial grounds of the "Radon" special plant were created at this place.
As for Vorobyov himself, in the course of this incident he received serious radioactive damage to the skin and powerful internal radiation. In particular, the level of radiation in his urine could not be precisely determined - all dosimeters were off scale. He spent several months in Kuibyshev hospitals, where he was treated with various ointments for peeling skin, and then for three or four years he was treated in a Moscow clinic that specialized in radiation injuries. As a result, he not only survived, but also managed to get to his feet and even returned to his previous job.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №17. Author: Valery Erofeev