Customer Radiation Requirement headache

rstocum

Involved In Discussions
#1
Last year one of our major customers warned us that they would start requiring certification that materials used to make their parts have less than a stated level of ionizing radiation. This month, we started receiving revised drawings from this customer with a new specification referenced that makes this new requirement official. The specification bans the presence of a number of substances like cadmium and mercury, which our suppliers already certify is not present in the materials they supply except in trace amounts.

My initial contact with one of our bigger material distibutors indicates that their suppliers check for radiation on their incoming materials, and when their finished materials are outgoing. They do not have a generic compliance letter to this effect. I am not sure how to approach getting a compliance letter of this type. I can't contact each manufacturer the distributor buys from, whose material we use.

Has anyone else had to deal with a radiation requirement like this? How did you handle it?:confused:
 
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Wes Bucey

Quite Involved in Discussions
#2
You can, however make a value decision among suppliers by including to each a statement to the effect
"If you cannot supply traceability of each lot of material back to original mill with that mill's certification the material meets our stated radiation level criteria, nor (in the absence of such certification) provide your own certification by an independent lab for EACH lot, then we can no long purchase material from you."

Alternately, You can purchase a calibrated radiation detection device and announce to each supplier that
"shipments which do not pass radiation inspection will be rejected and returned to supplier at supplier's expense."

There is a method and reason to this apparent "out-of-the-blue" request by your major customer.

Some mills throughout the world have been buying scrap metal from facilities where much of that scrap has been contaminated by cobalt60.

Obviously, mills which buy this contaminated scrap are considered likely candidates to lie (or be completely ignorant) about the source of their scrap, which may give them a profit advantage.
 
M

MIREGMGR

#3
This probably is a requirement that we should consider adding to our small quantity purchases of fabricated stainless parts.

Can anyone supply a copy of such a specification?
 

Wes Bucey

Quite Involved in Discussions
#4
This probably is a requirement that we should consider adding to our small quantity purchases of fabricated stainless parts.

Can anyone supply a copy of such a specification?
This is a case where I would make it a point to consult a prime source and not depend on casual comments from folks in a discussion forum to make my final decision. I know what I might write in general, but I have no clue to the correct instrumentation or min/max readings of such instruments to provide an acceptance criterion.

Thus said, why not pose the question to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?
 

rstocum

Involved In Discussions
#5
MIREGMGR,

I can't give you a copy of our customer's spec, but I can tell you that it requires our finished product to emit less than 1 Bq/g of any type of ionizing radiation.

As I am unfamiliar with handling radioactive material I had to look Bq/g up. It stands for Becquerels per gram. 1 bequerel = .000000027 millicuries of radiation, and is apparently the measure of 1 nucleus decay per second.

This seems to me to be a teeny, tiny amount of radiation! Can anyone tell me if my impression is correct? I am assuming that detection equipment sensitive enough for this specification would not be easy to get, or inexpensive.

Wes,

Thank you. Your suggestion will probably be the only approach I can use.
 

Randy

Super Moderator
#6
A Becquerel is very small unit indeed but it's what is used in lieu of the "curie" and the smaller curie elements ...as you stated millicurie....as a more precise tool.

I am familiar with the handling of ionizing material and their requirement may be based upon multiple factors including national regulations, identified industrial hygeine and health issues and product safety requirements.

What needs to be understood is that all radioactivity is not the same and the effects of smaller quantities of one isotope may be more destructive than those of larger ones...a exposure to 10 curies of Tritium (you pee will glow under UV) is nowhere near as bad as expose to a 0.01 curie exposure to Plutonium (your bladder may be disolved if expose is long enough). Of course this may be a bad example because of the different Alpha, Beta and Gamma properties of each but that is essentially it.

I didn't pay attention to your location, but here in the US under OSHA and a smathering of other regulations you may need to have a RSO or RPO (radiation safety officer, radition protection officer) or whatever you want to call them to manage an ioning radiation program for you...This of course is dependant upon the sources, activity levels and you legal environment.

OK...Indiana...US OSHA to start with...

You may want to check this US Fed OSHA link out which has been adopted in its entirety by Indiana OSHA....http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=10098

There is other information available on the web. The request you are having to meet is not unusual or out of line, one of my clients, a major metal producing company has the same requirement for metals sent to it for recycling. Let me check if there is public information on that because I cannot violate confidentiality if there is not.
 
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H

Hemi999

#7
Quicker then the NRC would be to search out and ask the State radiation office. Each state has one and they could give you an answer quicker then the NRC.
 

rstocum

Involved In Discussions
#8
Update:

I drafted a compliance letter and had purchasing send it out to all suppliers who supply components or raw material to the customer with this requirement. The signed letters are trickling in, and those who don't return one will get a follow up call. If they end up not signing to it, they will be replaced.

If anyone is interested in a sanitized copy of the letter, I will try to attach a copy to this thread. It is pretty generic, but it will have the company name, etc. changed.

The customer with the requirement has already done an on-site audit here, and covered what we are doing about the requirement. We did good in the audit, but I still questioned the amount of radiation in the requirement, and how to detect it. The auditor didn't know, but promised to look into how the requirement was developed to see if the requirement was unreasonable.

Fat chance I'll ever hear anything back on that one, but it was worth asking.

Thanks again to all who advised on this one.

Rich
 

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