List of Civilian Radiation Accidents - 1990s

1990s

• June 24, 1990 – Soreq, Israel – An operator at a commercial irradiation facility bypassed the safety systems on the JS6500 sterilizer to clear a jam in the product conveyor area. The one to two minute exposure resulted in a whole body dose estimated at 10 Gy or more. He died 36 days later despite extensive medical care. See Fool Irradiation for a discussion of this type of event.
• December 10–20, 1990 – a radiological accident that occurred at the Clinic of Zaragoza, in Spain. In the accident, at least 27 patients were injured, and 11 of them died, according to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). All of the injured were cancer patients receiving radiotherapy.
• October 26, 1991 – Nesvizh, Belarus – An operator at an atomic sterilization facility bypassed the safety systems to clear a jammed conveyor. Upon entering the irradiation chamber he was exposed to an estimated whole body dose of 11 Gy, with some portions of the body receiving upwards of 20 Gy. Despite prompt intensive medical care, he died 113 days after the accident.
• November 16, 1992 – Indiana Regional Cancer Center – After treating a patient with HDR Brachytherapy, personnel ignored alarms indicating high radiation levels and an available radiation survey meter was not used to confirm or rule out the area alarm's signal. The patient was transported back to a nursing home where the source later fell out. The patient received 1000X the intended dose and died several days later.
• August 31, 1994 – Commerce Township, Michigan – David Hahn's experimental reactor was discovered in his mother's back yard. The unshielded reactor exposed his neighborhood to 1,000 times the normal levels of background radiation.
• October 21, 1994 – a large 137Cs source was stolen by scrap metal scavengers in Tammiku, Estonia.
• May 1998 – Recycler Acerinox in Cádiz, Spain, unwittingly melted scrap metal containing radioactive sources; the radioactive cloud drifted all the way to Switzerland before being detected. (See Acerinox accident.)
• December 1998 – Istanbul, Turkey – two cobalt-60 teletherapy sources planned for export in 1993 were instead stored in a warehouse in Ankara, then moved to Istanbul, where a new owner sold them off as scrap metal. The buyers dismantled the containers, exposing themselves and others to ionizing radiation. Eighteen persons, including seven children, developed acute radiation syndrome. The exposed source was retrieved, but the other was still unaccounted for one year later.
• 1999 – A road near Mrima Hill, Kenya was rebuilt using local materials later found to be radioactive. Some workers were exposed to excessive radiation, and many residents of the area were tested for exposure. 2,975 tons of roadway material were to be dug up to eliminate the hazard.