September 14, 2012 - Bloomberg News -
Texas Posse Hunting for Halliburton’s Missing Radioactive Device - Texas may call out the National Guard in the hunt for a seven-inch radioactive rod used in drilling natural-gas wells, lost this week by Halliburton Co. (HAL) somewhere in a 130-mile swath of the state’s western oil fields. The Texas Department of State Health Services said yesterday it sought help from an Austin-based National Guard unit that has equipment to locate the radioactive item, which can pose a health risk if touched or held for several days. .Halliburton lost the unit on Sept. 11, according to a report yesterday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Pickup trucks with detection gear retraced the route of a vehicle that carried the radioactive rod before it was lost. The trucks drove at 10 miles an hour between Pecos, where the device was used on a well, and Odessa without finding the unit, the report said. "It’s not something that produces radiation in an extremely dangerous form," Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for the health department, said in an interview. "But it’s best for people to stay back, 20 or 25 feet." Oil-field service companies lower the radioactive units into wells to let workers identify places to break apart rock for a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which frees trapped oil and natural gas. While the loss of such a probe occurs from time to time, it has been years since a device with americium-241/beryllium, the material in Halliburton’s device, was misplaced in Texas, Van Deusen said.
September 14, 2012 - Pirate FM News- Invisible Radioactive Gas Floods Family Homes - Pirate FM has learnt some Cornish families are living in homes five times over safety levels of a potentially deadly gas. The Health Protection Agency said more than a hundred and sixty Duchy households had too much radon. It has been testing thousands of properties in the former Caradon, Carrick and Restormel areas for the radioactive gas. Dave Upton from Budock Water was stunned when his house tested thirty times higher than normal. He said: "The levels that we had here we actually higher than people were subjected to in the low level waste at Sellafield. I went from a point of not taking it terribly seriously to one where I really felt there were significant health risks there. "We knew that radon existed but frankly didn't take it terribly seriously. The more I read the more concerned I became so, as a consequence, we did quite a lot of work on the property and consequently brought the levels down."