The research reactor on NIST’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus is shut down and in a safe state. It will remain in shutdown status until the cause of the elevated radiation levels is determined and corrected. The elevated levels of radiation within the NCNR’s confinement building have dropped significantly, as expected. Radiation levels outside the confinement building have always been significantly below regulatory health and safety limits and have returned to their normal level of hundreds of times below those limits.
The staff members who received elevated exposures underwent prompt decontamination and screening, and all were cleared to go home by the evening of Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. On Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021, the affected staff members received additional screening that will help determine the precise doses they received. We have confirmed that no employee received doses in excess of limits established for radiation workers. The NCNR continues to be fully staffed 24 hours a day.
With safety as our No. 1 priority, NIST is now in a phase of careful and deliberate planning. The first step will be to develop a plan for safely assessing the condition of the reactor so that the root cause of the elevated radiation levels can be investigated. Once that root cause is determined, NIST will identify and then implement all necessary corrective actions.
We have heard concerns from our local community and want to reassure our neighbors that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has stated it is “satisfied the facility is safely shut down and the public around and near the facility remains safe.”
The NRC has strict requirements for the safe and secure operation of research reactors such as the one at NIST. It is important to note that the NIST research reactor differs from a nuclear power reactor in almost ..
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