ANSTO was surprised and disappointed by today’s media release from the Shadow Minister for Education, Training, Science and Research, Jenny Macklin, which refers to a radiopharmaceutical production incident that occurred at ANSTO last Thursday evening.
ANSTO published a media release on its website the following day, and ABC radio reported on what had happened. An email from ANSTO’s Chief of Operations was also sent to over 850 staff. Finally, even though the incident was so trivial as not to require notification to its regulator, ARPANSA, ANSTO still advised them. Suggestions that relevant information has not been made public in a timely manner are therefore demonstrably wrong.
Small amounts of radioactive gases are routinely released during radiopharmaceutical manufacture, and reported to the public via ANSTO’s annual Environmental Reports. Those reports show that the doses received by the public as a result of those releases are so low as not to be directly measurable.
Nevertheless, they can be calculated, and the reports show that the total maximum annual estimated dose to a member of the public from those releases is only a very small fraction of the radiation dose received by everyone each year from naturally occurring sources of radiation, and much less than the extra dose someone living in Canberra receives as compared to someone living in Sydney.
The releases which occurred last Thursday evening were not outside the normal release pattern, were well within regulatory limits and could not be detected off site.
Finally, the Shadow Minister’s media release tries to draw a link between this incident and the safety of nuclear reactors. As both the Shadow Minister’s media release and ANSTO’s media release last Friday made clear, the incident did not occur in the reactor, and has nothing to do with reactor safety.