When a spill does happen there

Are certain things you need to do

First you need to make sure you

Notify everybody in the lab and

You restrict the access

Anybody that doesn't need to be there

Should stay away

You need to soak up any free-standing

Liquid right away so it doesn't have a

Chance to soak in and cause a more

Difficult problem for cleaning up

So we're putting paper towels down to soak it up

We're also going to get some plastic bags and

Use them as shoe covers

This is verys simple and very effective

You don't want to track material around but you

Definitely don't want to get it on the bottom of your own shoes

So this way if we get contamination on the

Bottom of the shoes it won't be on the shoes

It'll be on the plastic bag

Then we put all that soaked up liquid and the

Paper towels into the combustable

Radioactive waste container or in a plastic bag

That we're going to label as combustable

Radioactive waste later

Take up the absorbant paper that got contaminated

And put that in the combustable waste

Continually check your hands to make sure they're not contaminated

If there is contamination on the gloves

Change the gloves and keep working

Outline the spill area

Here we're looking on the floor

Finding out where the area of contamination is

And marking it off so we know how to work

We're going to clean from the outside towards the inside

So we're gonna gather cleaning supplies

Paper towels and a soapy solution like Alconox

Wet the area down with it take a paper towel and

Clean from the outside-in

Only a small area and we'll check that to see if

We're getting contamination up

And keep cleaning until no more contamination

Comes up on the paper towel

You can check that with the meter

And again frequently check your hands so

We don't spread contamination inadvertently

Survey the area with the meter

Slowly again - 2 inches per second

And then we'll check for removable contamination

By checking with a wipe

Take a wipe and count that in a

Liquid scintillation counter or provide

It to somebody with a liquid scintillation counter

To count

Checking the areas and again frequently checking the gloves

So it's a slow process

You clean a little bit, you verify that stuff is coming up

And you do it again

Then once it's clean and no more material is coming up

Then you go to the next area

Here we're looking at the bench-top now

Doing the same process, cleaning small area

Verifying with the meter whether or not

Material is coming up

If it's hot do it again

It may be that some areas may need a little bit of

An abrasive cleaner like Commet or something

And that's fine too

Wet down a towel and rub over the area

See if we can get anything up that way

Just make sure you take your time

Make sure you do a good job cleaning

Again frequently check to see if

Contamination is coming up

If no more contamination comes up then

You go to the next area

Once we think we've got it all cleaned

We can check with the meter

It may read nothing, the background

Or if there may be a hot spot still there

Nothing's coming up so we'll take a wipe

And make sure that nothing is coming up

By counting it in a liquid scintillation counter

Occasionally you'll have a situation where

There'll be fixed contamination in a crack

And it won't come up and we can deal with that

Just let EH&S know what the results are

And we can deal with it

Continue to survey the whole spill area

There may be other areas that you didn't

Realize got contaminated

There may be a few drops down the front

Of the cabinet or on the handle

If you find a new area of contamination

Clean it up the same way and re-survey

When you're finally done your shoe covers

And gloves also need to go into the

Combustable radioactive waste container

And then you need to survey yourself afterwards

To make sure that you didn't get any contamination

On yourself while you were doing this job

Again you need to force yourself to go

Fairly slowly, 2 inches per second is about the

Fastest you should go

It's very difficult to go that slow

Especially if you're excited so force

Yourself to slow down

And then record the results

In this case the background was 30 and we found 110

So that's contamination, that's more than twice background

Twice background would be 60

And that was the initial reading

So now we're doing final surveys and if we did

A good job it'll be back down to background

In this case 35, that's less than twice background

So it's cleaned up and we documented it