Rockwell to Pay Fine for Radioactive Shipment
Rockwell International will pay a $42,000 penalty for shipping an excessively radioactive container by truck across country from its Santa Susana Field Laboratory west of Chatsworth, according to a settlement order issued Friday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The penalty “is one of the larger” fines assessed in the 15-year history of the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act, said Ed Bonekemper, assistant chief counsel for the department’s research and special programs administration.
Bonekemper said the settlement also established the “important principle” that companies are liable for a separate violation for each day an illegal shipment is on the road. Under terms of the agreement, Rockwell will pay $7,000 per day for six of the days that the container was in transit to Pennsylvania.
The Department of Energy originally sought $122,500 in fines. Rockwell agreed to the lower fine and dismissal of some charges. In an Oct. 10 letter to the department, Richard C. Seamans, Rockwell assistant general counsel, said the company was “pleased that we have been able to settle this matter without a hearing.”
The violation came to light in October, 1989, only because the truck hauling the offending cargo struck an overpass when the driver became lost on a country road a few miles from his destination in eastern Pennsylvania. There were no injuries nor any radioactive release, but measurements after the crash showed radioactivity above federal limits on the surfaces of three containers and the underside of the truck.
The truck was hauling six containers of contaminated equipment from Rockwell back to its owners. Included were fuel baskets--devices placed in shipping casks to keep nuclear fuel rods from bouncing around. The baskets had accompanied shipments of spent fuel to the Santa Susana lab, where Rockwell extracted plutonium from spent fuel for the government.
Nuclear Assurance Corp. of Norcross, Ga., owned the equipment in five of the containers, and was having them shipped to Alaron Corp., in Wampum, Pa., to be refurbished. The sixth fuel basket was bound for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River atomic weapons plant in South Carolina.
The truck left Santa Susana Oct. 18, 1989, traveling first to South Carolina and then north to Pennsylvania. The crash occurred before dawn on Oct. 24 when the trailer lost 10 feet of its roof as it drove through a low underpass.
Energy officials issued a complaint in May, seeking $122,500 in penalties for 14 alleged violations. Seven counts represented the seven days in which the hot containers were on the road. The other seven involved the truck itself having a radiation reading on its underside that exceeded federal limits.
The energy department dropped the seven charges involving the truck after Rockwell provided data showing that it met radiation safety limits when it left Santa Susana. The company contended that the crash might have caused the trailer’s contents to shift, producing a higher reading.
Rockwell also said two of the three allegedly hot containers met radiation limits. It acknowledged, however, that its own surveys showed a reading on the hottest box of 2,500 millirem per hour--2 1/2 times the federal limit of 1,000 millirem per hour.
The hottest box posed no threat to communities through which it passed, but a person sitting on it for one hour would have received a radiation dose equivalent to 50 to 100 chest X-rays.
Rockwell argued that the driver ignored instructions to go to Pennsylvania before South Carolina, which would have cut the journey of the hottest box by a day. Energy officials agreed to fine the company for six days of violations, rather than seven.
Without a settlement, the case would have gone before an administrative law judge.
