The Department of Energy plans to fine Battelle Energy Alliance $412,500 following incidents of worker exposure to radiation at the Idaho National Laboratory last year.
The company stopped radiological work twice for worker training, which among other safety efforts prompted the agency to reduce the fine from $600,000. Nonetheless, the DOE issued a preliminary notice of violation Thursday after its investigation found four severity level I violations and one severity level III violation.
They address incidents that occurred at the Eastern Idaho site in August and November of 2011. The first resulted in a worker receiving an unplanned extremity dose of about 3.6 rem at the Hot Fuel Examination Facility and followed an incident 8 months earlier resulting in two workers receiving extremity doses in excess of 9 rem. The November incident, at the Zero Power Physics Reactor, involved a broken plutonium fuel plate and required decontamination of 16 workers, with Americium-241 later detected in the lungs of two of them.
"Both of these events involved deficient work control documents and failures to perform work consistent with approved procedures," the DOE notice read. Battelle will have 30 days to reply to the notice before the agency takes further action.