Grand Canyon Museum Reportedly Had Buckets Of Uranium Sittin

[pixy0stix]

Grand Canyon Museum Reportedly Had Buckets Of Uranium Sitting Around For 18 Years

www.npr.org/2019/02/19/696001017/grand-canyon-museum-reportedly-had-buckets-of-uranium-sitting-around-for-18-year


For many years, three buckets full of uranium sat in a museum building at Grand Canyon National Park. Tours often visited the museum collection building, with children on tours sitting next to the uranium-filled buckets for a half hour.

[miniroller]

This part’s pretty relieving, though 😳:
How was the uranium discovered after all that time? In March 2018, the teenage son of a Park Service employee had a Geiger counter that detected radiation in the collection room, Stephenson said. The buckets had apparently been in a basement for decades before being moved to the museum.

[pugz]

I have so.many.questions.

[circa1978]

This entire article is full of wtf:

“Photos provided to the newspaper by Stephenson show technicians arriving in June 2018 to take away the buckets of uranium. The technicians reportedly dumped the buckets at an old uranium mine two miles away, then for some reason brought the buckets back to the building.“

[rupertpenny]

I work in a museum-adjacent field and this doesn't really surprise me. Well, the fact that someone brought buckets of uranium into the museum in the first place is weird, unless the museum building had previously been used for something where leaving buckets of uranium hanging around is normal (), but the fact that they just sat around for decades without anyone moving them or realizing what they were is pretty predictable. People find all kinds of weird shit in museums and archives all the time, the weird things just usually aren't radioactive.

[2curlydogs]

[tiki]

This is CRAZY. You know at some point a bored kid on a tour took a rock out of the bucket and snuck it home. Really, really not good. The whole situation reminds me of a story about a new lab employee whose radiation exposure badge was always over the limit. An investigation revealed that he frequently enjoyed goat's milk cheese gifted to him by a relative. A relative who lived in Russia. Near the Chernobyl site. If he hadn't started working with radiation professionally he never would have known.

[lolo]

Feb 20, 2019 11:33:57 GMT -5 tiki said:

This is CRAZY. You know at some point a bored kid on a tour took a rock out of the bucket and snuck it home. Really, really not good. The whole situation reminds me of a story about a new lab employee whose radiation exposure badge was always over the limit. An investigation revealed that he frequently enjoyed goat's milk cheese gifted to him by a relative. A relative who lived in Russia. Near the Chernobyl site. If he hadn't started working with radiation professionally he never would have known.

Whoa, what a story!

[cville]

Everyone's all worked up about the visitors, and with good reason, but I have seen barely any talk about the employees. Near daily exposure? Damn.

[miniroller]

Feb 20, 2019 12:09:59 GMT -5 cville said:

Everyone's all worked up about the visitors, and with good reason, but I have seen barely any talk about the employees. Near daily exposure? Damn.

I believe you just pinpointed America’s: “Yeah, but what about ME?! This could’ve happened to ME!” problem.

[downtoearth]

Feb 20, 2019 12:09:59 GMT -5 cville said:

Everyone's all worked up about the visitors, and with good reason, but I have seen barely any talk about the employees. Near daily exposure? Damn.

The public might be doing that, but the focus in the NPR article and by the park service employee Stephenson is obviously, first and foremost, workers.

The NPR article (and what I heard on the radio) focused on the worker exposure and letting all past and current employees know about their potential exposure.  I applaud the Health & Safety employee who came forward and risked his job to notify former employees and the public when he felt like the Park Service wasn't taking the risk seriously - plus this isn't his first time:

Stephenson said the park didn't do anything to warn workers or tourists that they had perhaps been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation, despite a Right to Know law that he said requires disclosing the incident.

"My first interest is the safety of the workers and the people," he told the Republic. He is especially concerned about kids who were potentially exposed to radiation, at levels he calculated to be 1,400 times the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's safe level for children.

Dennis Wagner, the Republic reporter who broke the story, said that Stephenson approached the newspaper to get the word out to the public after his efforts to get the park service to warn the public went nowhere.

This isn't Stephenson's first time raising alarms about a dangerous working environment, the Republic reports:

"Stephenson, a military veteran who is certified as an occupational safety and health technician, was in a similar controversy during his time in the Navy. According to court records, he began calling for action to prevent falls after a series of accidents in 2016.

"As complaints escalated, Stephenson was fired. He turned to the Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that protects whistleblowers, and his termination was stayed. It is unclear how that case was resolved, but within months, Stephenson had a new job with the National Park Service.

"Stephenson said the uranium exposure saga developed while he was pursuing a racial-discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity office. Stephenson is African-American."