Rad Training

[Neen5029]

Just out of curiosity, how much rad training do your departments require to run emergency response? I'm a Rad Monitor Instructor, and I just wanted to get a feel for what other places require outside of my team... Thanks!

[morriss]

I have a slight advantage in this area. I work at a nuclear power station. My volunteer fire company is on the response to the station and included in the Emergency plan.

We have yearly drills that are graded by the local and federal agencies with regards to evacuation, decontamination, and monitoring. I conduct and radiation detection and monitoring course each year for the department. It is pretty basic, but it covers our part of the plan.

We are not designated as a regional hazardous materials team.

[hazmater]

I would hope that all HM teams would require their personnel to have a basic understanding of identification and detection of the different types of rad. How in depth generally revolves around having a specific need in your response area. Not to mention having someone like yourself involved with the team, who has a more advanced level of rad training. We require a basic competancy in monitoring equipment, decon, etc. However, we are also fortunate to have 2 DOE labs close by. We train with members of the RAP team, and have quality instructors to keep profecient with techniques, tools, and sources. This has helped our team to become more comfortable with advanced level training. Depts with little or no, (pardon the pun) exposure may not have a good instructor knowledge base. Train your team to whatever level they are willing to train to, more knowledge is a good thing.

[Aerial 131]

I to have an advantage in that I work for Hanford Fire at the Hanford Nuclear Site. We get contineous trng with a required refresher every 2 years. Last year we were involved in over 50 drills which almost always involve RadCon issues. We have instruments on our response apparatus for patient issues or whatever. There are procedures in place for us to follow to avoid problems.

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[hazmax]

I'm from a relatively small dept in MS. We have a three county hazmat response team. There are no hard rules or protocol for rad, but we get great training from the MS State Fire Academy and maintain as best we can in our dept. There's a cobalt60 source in our town, and we train/correspond with those employees as often as possible.