UW Researchers Unite to Salvage Their Work After Radiation Leak Shuts Down Their Labs
On the morning of Friday, May 3, Dr. Dirk Keene woke up in Atlanta to an automated alert message from the University of Washington. A radiation leak had been detected at the Harborview Research & Training (R&T) building in Seattle, the same building where he researches neurological diseases and trauma. At the time he didn’t think much of it. He’d seen plenty of these alerts before for chemical spills and laboratory accidents and they never seemed to amount to much; maybe a short evacuation or a day of cleanup, but never more than a minor inconvenience.
It wasn’t until he returned home to Seattle that it became clear this was no ordinary accident.
The roughly 200 research employees in the R&T building were told not to come to work that day. Those who showed up anyway were confronted by a building under complete lockdown and witnessed officials from over half a dozen state and federal agencies working to contain the radiation leak.
The Leak
Late on May 2, contractors for the Department of Energy (DOE) were removing an irradiator, a medical machine used to sterilize blood, when they accidentally cut into the radioactive cesium capsule while preparing the machine for shipping on the loading dock. Cesium powder is highly radioactive and can cause radiation burns and increase cancer risk. None of the 13 people present for the leak showed signs of cesium exposure, UW spokesperson Susan Gregg told The Stranger.
Read more: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/06/26/40592971/uw-researchers-unite-to-salvage-their-work-after-radiation-leak-shuts-down-their-labs
