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ALAMOS SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY
‘
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ALAMOS. NEW MEXICO
OFFICE MEMORANDUM
TO
:
James E, Reeves
FROM
:
Alvin C. Graves
DATE:
1 April 1959
AOA OG
SUBJECT: PROPOSED TRANSFER RAD-SAFE RESPONSIBILITY, OPERATIONAL PERIODS AT EPG
SYMBOL: JDO-914
Reference:
Memo, Reeves to Distribution, TR:CLW-2889, undated
The Los Alamos Scientific Leboratory wishes to express its concern at
the proposed transfer of rad-safety responsibility to an agency which
has no competence in that field. The implication of the covering memo
of the referenced document, that the radiological safety service is
nothing more than a support service in the same category as the provision
of housing, messing, and utilities, is either a misconception of the
service that has been supplied in the past or is a proposal for 4 change
in the service such that it will not meet the needs of the agencies
requiring rad-safety services.
The Los Alamos Seientific Laboratory has a responsibility to maintain
an accurate record of the radiological exposure of its employees in
their work, as well as to limit such exposures to the greatest possible
extent.
The first of these responsibilities implies a rad-safe organi-
zation with the technical ability to select film badge materials appro-
priate to the task being performed, the technical ability to calibrate
those films in a manner consistent with expected radiation, and with
the technical ability to process that film under appropriately controlled
conditions. The second of these respozsibilities implies a rad-safe
organization with an intimete knowledge of the operations being conducted,
the radiation hazards (alpha, beta, gammo, or neutror) likely to be
encountered, and the ability and desire to suggest changes in operetions
such that hazards and dosages received will be reduced.
The over-ali
responsibility implies e rad-safe organization whose findings and
recommendations will have a wide acceptance value among many agencies.
This Laboratory at least will not accept such findings and recarmendations from an organization staffed on a part time basis with men trained
as carpenters, plumbers, or the like, and it does not believe that other
agencies will accept such an organization either.
On Page 2 of the enclosure to the referenced document, the statement is
made in 2.c.(4) that "the control of rad-safety by the technical organization whose prime concern is to accomplish the expeditious testing of
devices is not conducive to a reasonable and health conscious attitude
toward rad-safety." If this statement were correct, the propriety of
any technical organization to have responsibility for the safety of its
operations should also be suspect. This principle would indicate, for
example, that the Los Alanos Scientific Leboratory should not have
responsibility for its own rad-safety and, as a matter of fact, that
the Atomic Energy Camission itself should consider trausferring its
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