GENERAL DISCUSSION

I. Othman (Syrian Arab Republic): In Session 1, Mr. Beninson spoke about “continuity of responsibility” for the safety of sources. As companies can go out of business and employees change jobs, and eventually retire, perhaps we should devise a mechanism for ensuring such continuity.

J.W. Hickey (USA – Chairperson): There is more likely to be continuity of responsibility in a system where user companies must take out insurance, post bonds or make financial deposits to cover costs arising out of incidents in which the sources being used by them may be involved. The user companies have a financial interest in there being continuity of knowledge regarding the sources, which is essential for meaningful continuity of responsibility.

M. Bahran (Yemen): Is enough being done at the international level to ensure the safety and security of radiation sources — if only of those belonging to Categories 1 and 2 of the Categorization of Radiation Sources recently issued within the IAEA framework?

A.J. González (IAEA): In my opinion, no. In fact, we have no idea how many sources there are in the world, partly because many of them (like the orphan sources found in Georgia) are military — not civilian — sources.

In September 1998, the International Conference on the Safety of Radiation Sources and the Security of Radioactive Materials (the Dijon Conference) called for further efforts to investigate “whether international undertakings concerned with the effective operation of national regulatory control systems and attracting broad adherence” can be formulated. In my opinion, most countries would be willing to enter into such undertakings, but unfortunately there are still some countries which would not.

We now have the Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources, but the obligations arising out of it are only moral obligations — not legal obligations with penalties envisaged for cases of non-fulfilment. We need an international undertaking with tougher provisions than those of the Code of Conduct.

83 D.J. Beninson (Argentina): I think it will be an enormous step in the right direction if most countries start implementing the Code of Conduct.

A.M. Borras (Philippines): One way of supporting international efforts would be for each of us to try to determine, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, the number of sources — including orphan sources — within his/her own country.

J.F.M. Lacronique (France): A few weeks ago, a worker at a nuclear power plant in southern France triggered a radiation alarm as he was passing through a monitoring portal on his way into a control zone. It was soon established that the bracelet of his watch contained cobalt-60. At OPRI (the French office for protection against ionizing radiation), we subsequently established that the cobalt-60 was in the small connecting pins of the bracelet.

The watch had been purchased at a branch of the Carrefour supermarket chain during a one-day sale. We ascertained that some 1500 of the 5000 watches of the type in question which had been on offer that day had been sold — through about 80 different Carrefour branches.

Carrefour withdrew the unsold watches, which we took into our care.

We organized a meeting with representatives of Carrefour, of the company which had imported the watches and of the French agency for consumer protection in order to work out how to recover the watches which had not yet been returned. The Carrefour representatives, who wished to avoid a radioactivity scare so soon after a BSE scare which had affected Carrefour’s business not long before, opposed the issuing of announcements containing the word “radioactivity” and referring to possible health problems. The announcements placed in newspapers were so “discreet” that they led to the return of only 5% of the sold watches.

When we asked Carrefour sales staff why Carrefour was requesting customers to return the watches, we were told that it was because the watches were imitation Seikos. Despite the issuing of press releases by us, newspapers did not pick up the story; in my view, they exercised a form of “self-censorship” because Carrefour advertises very widely in newspapers.

Finally, the cable-car disaster of early November 2000 in Kaprun, Austria, ensured that for the time being no media attention would be paid to the “radioactive watch” issue.

The importing company has traced the connecting pins to Hong Kong, where the watches were assembled, but further investigations are hampered by the fact that there are thousands of foundries in China.

We informed the IAEA and the European Commission about the incident, and we received requests for further information from Finland, Italy and Japan. In the case of Japan, we were told that a similar incident had occurred there some time previously.

How can we recover the watches which have still not been returned? Should we issue a dramatic public warning that the watches are dangerous? They are not dangerous: the dose rate to the wrist is about 40 µSv/hour, which means about 320 mSv/year if the watches are carried on the wrist continuously (for 8000 hours during the year). That is not a lethal dose, but there will be cancers among the people wearing the watches and some of those people may well attribute their cancers to the watches — so law suits are likely in the course of time.

I am sure that we have not heard the end of this story.

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I. Othman (Syrian Arab Republic): We check everything being imported into our country for radioactivity, and in the course of checking a shipment of 4000 watches we discovered that about 600 of them were contaminated with cobalt-60. The contaminated watches were returned to Hong Kong.

That incident illustrates the importance of effective radiation monitoring at national borders.

D.J. Beninson (Argentina): I have heard a rumour that the radioactive connecting pins originated in Taiwan.

J.F.M. Lacronique (France): We knew that a radiation source had been melted in Taiwan 4–

5 years previously, and in a press release issued by us we therefore referred to Taiwan. Very soon after that, the chargé d’affaires of the Taiwanese representation in France contacted us and requested us to issue a press release stating that Taiwan was not the “culprit”.

A. Petö (Hungary): I am surprised that OPRI did not do more to publicize the incident.

J.F.M. Lacronique (France): I think that was more a matter for the agency for consumer protection, which — incidentally — is part of the Ministry of Finance. Moreover, OPRI — unlike Carrefour — does not have the money to pay for large advertisements.

We had hoped that Carrefour would publicize the incident enough, but our hopes were disappointed.

THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE