Inel Backs Off From Geiger Counter Ban

The Energy Department has moved to smooth relations after kicking a Latah County member of a watchdog committee off the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory site because he was using the equivalent of a Geiger counter.

Government officials at INEL have announced that private citizens will be allowed to carry radiation detection instruments while touring the facility.

The new policy includes provisions to ensure that readings people obtain from those instruments are accurate, spokesman Nick Nichols said.

“It takes a good deal of training to be able to use a radiation instrument or Geiger counter in a way to be able to understand the meaning of what a detector is telling them,” Nichols said.

In June, Chuck Broscious of the Environmental Defense Institute and a member of a Centers for Disease Control oversight subcommittee, was escorted from the area after he refused to turn off a Geiger-like counter he was carrying when it began registering excessive amounts of radiation.

Energy Department officials claimed Broscious’ mail-order instrument was likely miscalibrated.

Two months later, subcommittee chairman James Blackman, a Boise physician, resigned in the wake of charges that the government applied pressure to quash a letter from the subcommittee requesting a public apology.

The new policy requires INEL officials to be notified in advance that someone wants to monitor their facilities and calibration records for the instrument must be provided ahead of time.

People carrying their own equipment must be accompanied by an Energy Department health specialist trained in radiation monitoring who will record separate data for the government.

Broscious called the policy “an important precedent that other groups at other DOE sites can now use to gain more information about radioactive releases.”