ENVIRONMENT: NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION TO INSPECT MAGILL HALL

A team from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to inspect Southeast Missouri State University's Magill Hall next week to determine if radioactive contamination of the science building has been successfully cleaned up.

The cleanup gutted much of the building's basement and a second-floor laboratory and some equipment will have to be replaced, officials said.

Dr. Ken Dobbins, Southeast president, said the school doesn't have any cost estimates yet on such work.

The NRC is expected to make a final report to the university within 30 days after the building inspection. But it could be early next year before the health testing is wrapped up.

Even then, the university will have to go through some regulatory procedures with the NRC. "I would assume we will still be meeting with them through the spring semester," Dobbins said.

The six-member team from the NRC's Chicago area regional office is scheduled to make its inspection Tuesday through Thursday. The NRC is bringing in a mobile lab to provide some immediate and preliminary test results.

Inspectors will use floor monitors and hand-held devices to check for radiation. They also will take air samples.

The mobile lab will be parked adjacent to Magill Hall. It will be open to the public from 3-5 p.m. Wednesday. Team members will be on hand to answer questions.

"Each time we open it up for a couple of hours for public observation," said NRC spokeswoman Pam Alloway-Mueller. "It is a good tool to introduce people to some of the surveying techniques and work we do out in the field."

Opening the lab to the public allows people "to see where some of their tax dollars are going," she said.

The NRC inspection is expected to be the final chapter in the decontamination work that began in August.

The university has spent about $1 million to clean up radioactive contamination, and test employees and others to see if they suffered from exposure to radioactive americium-241.

The university found in February that americium-241 had leaked from a vial in a safe inside a basement storage room. The leak was discovered after an inspection by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

A contamination problem later was found in Room 242, a second-floor Magill Hall laboratory.

Science Applications International Corp. has finished cleaning up the basement and Room 242. The cleanup crews finished a week ago, said Dr. Chris McGowan, dean of the College of Science and Mathematics.

"There is a big sigh of relief around here already," he said.

McGowan said SAIC crews hauled off 30 tons of contaminated materials, everything from cabinets in basements hallways to seismograph sensors. The removed materials also included books and old paper records. Room 242 and much of the basement have been gutted, he said.

"Most of the stuff they hauled off was not cleanable. Most of it was paper and wood materials," he said.

The top layer of concrete was removed from the basement floor, leaving a rough surface that the university likely will put a seal over, McGowan said.

University officials already have been cleared for limited access to the cleaned up areas in the building. McGowan said he hopes after the NRC visit that the temporary walls around a stairwell inside the building and around the outside staging area for the cleanup work can be removed. At that point, the university would have full access to the building.