University pays $11,000 in fines

Southeast Missouri State University has paid an $11,000 fine stemming from a radiation spill in Magill Hall of Science that cost the school more than $1 million to clean up last year.

School officials said the university paid the fine this month rather than appeal the penalty levied by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Southeast had until Oct. 15 to pay the fine or appeal the punishment. The fine stemmed from a radiation spill in a safe involving the material, americium-241.

Southeast was fined for failing to make radiation surveys to determine the hazards, for failing to control activities to avoid overexposure, and for possessing radioactive material that wasn't authorized in the school's NRC license.

Federal officials said the fine was doubled because the university took four months to determine the contents of the safe once it was questioned by an NRC inspector in February 2000, possessed the radioactive material for 10 years without authorization, and "failed to implement an effective radiation protection program, which allowed the problems to persist and contributed to the overexposure."

Southeast wasn't fined for failing to have a radiation safety officer from August 1999 until July 2000. The school previously had a safety officer who left the school in the summer of 1999.

University officials said they felt the fine was fair.

"It is almost the minimum amount they could fine us," said Dr. Chris McGowan, dean of the College of Science and Mathematics.

"We didn't have an adequate radiation safety program," said McGowan.

School officials mistakenly thought the americium had been removed years ago. Even after learning of the spill, university officials initially thought it was confined to the storage room where the safe was located.

Licensed changed

A worker for the initial company hired to clean up the contamination suffered exposure to the radiation but experienced no health problems. The university ultimately hired a second contractor who did more extensive cleanup work under tight supervision from NRC staff.

Since the spill, Southeast has put in place an extensive radiation plan and properly disposed of radioactive materials, McGowan said. Southeast also has trained a science professor to serve as a radiation safety officer.

"We can't go back to what we were doing before," said McGowan.

The university's federal license has been changed to accurately reflect the radioactive materials that it continues to use for science experiments.

"We are using things that have a shorter half life and we are using things properly," he said.

The extensive cleanup of the contaminated Magill Hall basement and an upstairs lab last year included testing to determine if any university employees or students had suffered exposure to radioactive material.

McGowan said the results showed that university employees and students weren't exposed.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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