Demolition Derby
India is wonderfully adept at turning waste products into valuable recyclable commodities. It welcomes huge metal monsters that once sailed the high seas, so that its capable waste-management crews can clamber over those leviathans-in-distress, to dismantle them, quantify and qualify, assemble and re-assign to other uses. Let there be no waste.And there is great value in such recycling ventures. And great danger, too when parts that should be carefully sequestered to ensure dangerous materials and other chemicals within are not released to the atmosphere, are not first looked to.
Ship-breaking yards aside, and despite the warnings that all hazardous materials on board the ship which are not required for final voyage should be removed prior to delivery of the ship for recycling being ignored, imperilling the health and safety of those thousands of industrious Indians employed in those yards doing important work taking apart and helping to recycle tonnes of steel and other precious resources, there are other areas of scrapping that present worse problems.
Mightn't a university be thought to be alert to the problems inherent in not adequately keeping track of the machinery used for various purposes in their engineering and research departments? Well, one might suppose so. But suppose that the individual whose scientific research involved the use of an irradiator, a highly radioactive instrument with cobalt-60 rods therein, retired from his position, and the instrument was placed in storage where it remained for decades.
Forgotten, its presence and its purpose. Until the day came along when some activities were undertaken to rid the University of Delhi of unused and temporarily stored, space-consuming furniture and other no-longer-used objects. So, along with old chairs and work tables and cabinets and other such objects, out went a gamma ray generator which had been bought from Atomic energy of Canada Ltd. four decades ago. Just more trash.
Trouble is, it wasn't merely trash. The lead housing around the radioactive components of the generator were pried off, and the cobalt-60 rods were taken out, and some of them broken into smaller pieces, and then distributed to metal dealers around the city for re-sale and further use. But then something mysterious occurred; a series of radiation illnesses were seen in the Delhi area; at first discovery assumed to be the result of medical waste.
Eventually tracked down, but not before the country's own Atomic Energy Regulatory Board condemned its own country's laxity in disposing of such dangerous material; an obvious and "serious violation" of nuclear safety protocols. The result of which was a direct order to the university to halt all further research activity "involving the use of radiation sources".
After all, it's the remedy of a curious child playing with matches, to take them all away and give that mischievous, unwary child a good scolding. Thanks to the assistance of MDF Nordion, the search for the contaminated materials through recycling yards, scrap metal shops and other sites was successful, and all the offending materials located.
Not, however, before taking the life of one recycler who was fully exposed, and making others very, very ill from radiation exposure.
Good reason, perhaps for Canada to have second thoughts on lifting its 35-year ban on selling nuclear technology to India? Well no, not really; one must assume that government authorities and those departments and their scientific staff who are actively engaged in nuclear technology are more fully aware of the dangers inherent in the use and careful disposal of those materials.
As for the spokesperson for the university, he assured the public that the administrators of the university were "very apologetic", and that "the university takes moral responsibility for what has happened". I guess.
"We must learn from this incident so that such problems don't recur in future." Really!?
Labels: India, Security, Technology, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Monday, May 10, 2010
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