All that disclaimer aside: a banana produces about 15 Bq (which is s^-1), i.e. 900 cpm.

Unfortunately radiation medicine is pretty complicated and the report gives us very little info, presumably mostly because they don't have very much info. It will take some time and effort to establish more.

What we do know is that they measured 300 CPM at the person's hair, which was probably where they expected the highest count due to absorbed water (likely clothing was already stripped at this point). CPM is a tricky unit because it is something like the "raw" value from the instrument, the literal number of counts from the tube, and determining more absolute metrics like activity and dose requires knowing the calibration of the meter. The annoying thing here is that radiation protection professionals will still sometimes just write CPM because for a lot of applications there's only one or a handful of instruments approved and they tend to figure the reader knows which instrument they have. Frustrating. Still, for the common LND7311 tube and Cs137, 300CPM is a little below 1 uSv/hr. That wouldn't equate to any meaningful risk (a common rule of thumb is that a couple mSv is typical annual background exposure). However, for a less sensitive detector, the dose could be much higher (LND7311 is often used in pancake probes for frisking because it is very sensitive and just background is often hundreds of CPM). Someone who knows NRC practices better might know what detector would be used here.

That said the field dose here is really not the concern, committed dose from ingesting the water is. Ingesting radioactive material is extremely dangerous because, depending on the specific isotopes involved, it can persist in the body for a very long time and accumulate in specific organs. Unfortunately it is also difficult to assess. This person will likely go to a hospital with a specialty center equipped with a full body counter, and counts will also be taken on blood samples. These are ways of estimating the amount of radioactive isotopes in the body. In some cases tissue samples of specific organs may be taken.

I believe that the cavity pool water would be "clean" other than induced radioactivity (activation products from being bombarded by radiation). Because water shields so well the pool should not be that "hot" from this process. Most of those products have short half-lives which, on the one hand, means that they deliver a higher dose over a shorter period of time---but also means they will not longer forever and are less likely to be a chronic problem if they are not an acute one.

I suspect this will get some press coverage and we will perhaps learn more about the patient's state.

Another way we can get at this question is by the bureaucracy of the notification. An 8-hour notification as done here is required in relatively minor cases. Usually for a "big deal emergency" a one-hour notification is required. The definition of such an emergency depends on the site emergency plan but I think acute radiation exposure to a worker would generally qualify.

As others had said, more alarming part is that they ingested the water, which could go like defected Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. But it could also be like man eating few bananas seasoned with expired Himalayan salt. The report just doesn't say how much of what was ingested.

Wow

  This incident report says that the worker fell into a "reactor cavity" containing water and that there was a measurable amount of radiation detected in their hair after the initial clean-up. The two situations don't seem remotely compatible to me.

Not sure about spiders. Are their fangs considered to be teeth? Platypus have venomous spurs, not sure what that’s called.

If you fell in a lake and accidentally ingested some wayer known to contain some pathagen dangerous to humans, you might seek medical care, but I don't think most people would consider that an emergency. This is similar.

Even drinking it I would think would be completely fine. The water itself doesn't get activated.

  the primary hazard from acute, high-dose uranium ingestion is chemical toxicity leading to acute kidney failure (nephrotoxicity), not radiation.

Doing it often doesn’t really add to the cost. More reporting is helpful because it explicitly makes it clear even operational issues can have lessons to be learned from. It also keeps the reporting system running and operationally well maintained.

WebPKI does this as well.

It's important to identify even small defects or incidents so that patterns can be noticed before they turn into larger issues. You see the same breaker tripping at 3x the rate of other ones, and even though maybe nothing was damaged you now know there's something to investigate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFRUL7vKdU8&t=11s

https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveFromNewYork/comments/1bh2edu/th...

I'm essentially pro-nuclear, I just don't trust people who run it.

> According to federal reports, the contractor ingested some of the reactor water before being yanked out, scrubbed down, and checked for radiation. They walked away with only minor injuries and about 300 counts per minute of radiation detected in their hair.

> That sounds like a lot, but apparently it isn't terribly serious. He underwent a decontamination scrubdown and was back on the job by Wednesday.

This might be 500+ MBq (0.5 GBq). Yeah it's a different isotope, but clearly not a "non-emergency"

This is why the Sievert exists as a unit.

As a general rule, falling into a reactor pool is probably fine, as long as you don't reach the bottom. (But please don't try it.)

There's even an XKCD "What if" about it. https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/