14 Oct (NucNet): About 60 employees at the Westinghouse nuclear fuel fabrication plant in Västerås, Sweden, have carried out work with ionising radiation without undergoing valid medical examinations, the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) said.
SSM said it believes that Westinghouse has failed to implement the necessary controls. SSM said Westinghouse must investigate the incident and submit results and proposals by 24 October 2014.
Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB, which operates the Västerås facility, told SSM on 29 September 2014 that an internal audit found that 60 employees – so-called ‘Category A’ workers at the highest risk of exposure – had not undergone valid medical examinations.
The criterion for being considered Category A is a dose of six or more millisieverts per year (mSv/yr), which is equivalent to 30 percent of the maximum annual dose recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). The recommended ICRP limit for those exposed to ionising radiation at work is 20 mSv/yr.
SSM’s Nils Addo said SSM believed Westinghouse had not fulfilled safety requirements and was now demanding that Westinghouse carry out an investigation and “root cause analysis”.
Westinghouse said today that it was carrying out an investigation and looking into its procedures to make sure no such incident could happen again. “All employees have undergone a medical control and have returned to their normal work tasks,” a statement said.
Nuclear fuel is manufactured at Västerås, in southeast Sweden, for nuclear power plant customers in Sweden and in several other countries.
