Coal power plant owner fined over Cesium Radiation exposure

[txlibdem]

Basin Electric Power Cooperative, which operates a three-unit coal plant in Laramie near Wheatland, Wyo., exposed 17 workers, six of them above regulatory limits.
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The workers were exposed to a radioactive element, cesium 137, that is common in nuclear plants because it is produced when uranium atoms are split. The Laramie River Station, completed in the early 1980s, does not split atoms, but it does use cesium, as many coal plants do.

Cesium 137 emits gamma rays. In coal plants and other industrial plants, the amount of radiation that passes through the material being measured gives an indication of its content, just as an X-ray gives an indication of what is inside a human body. Typically, the coal plants are measuring ash and moisture content of the fuel they burn, and the quantity passing through a coal chute.

The gauge has a shutter mechanism, akin to the shutter on a camera, and it was supposed to be closed and locked before the workers — welders — were sent into the area. But the shutter was left open.

Unlike workers at a nuclear plant, the welders did not have equipment to measure the amount of radiation they were exposed to. The calculated dose was 647 millirems, about what the average American receives in two years from natural sources. That amount would not be a violation in a nuclear plant, although inadvertently exposing workers there would have been a problem. For non-nuclear workers, considered members of the general public, the limit is 100 millirems.

...from http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/and-you-thought-radiation-was-a-problem-for-nuclear-plants/
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