Bruce Power is going to test some long term employees for exposure to low levels of radiation as a precautionary measure.
Spokesperson John Peevers tells Bayshore Broadcasting News this is a follow up from lessons learned during last November’s alpha-radiation incident.
That’s when contamination was discovered in the reactor vault where up to 563 people had been working during the restart project.
The company eventually concluded that 195 workers had been exposed, but testing found the levels did not exceed the safety standards prescribed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
Peevers says they learned a lot from the incident and realized some of the assumptions they were making about levels of alpha were not as accurate as they could be.
Peevers says they’ve made a lot of changes including putting extra protections in place and changing some procedures, but this is the next logical step.
Peevers says the restart project involved contract workers and the company now wants to look at their own employees to find out if they’ve had alpha exposure.
40 long term operations employees will be tested to begin with but Peevers expects in all likelihood they will be testing more.
He also expects the tests will again come back within regulatory levels.
The workers were informed about the testing in a company memo sent out Friday.
