Agencies help schools get rid of radioactive materials

Since the Illinois Emergency Management Agency launched a voluntary program in November to seek out and safely dispose of these materials, it’s gotten responses from 55 high schools in the state and so far collected material from 48, said Mike Klebe, an engineer with the agency.

Most of these materials are chemical compounds containing uranium or thorium, but school leaders shouldn’t be alarmed. “They’re not that dangerous,” Klebe said. “Just because a chemical is radioactive doesn’t make it dangerous.” The only way these materials could be harmful is if ingested, he said.

In fact, they’re less dangerous than mercury, which Klebe remembers playing with as a child. Mercury spills in schools in recent years have caused major disruptions, in some cases, shutting down schools for days, while there haven’t been any incidents involving radioactive materials in schools.

The Illinois agency’s Orphan Source Recovery Program has also collected some old radiation detection equipment, such as Geiger counters, that had some radioactive material, and small generator kits used in science labs to study the effects of radiation.

Today’s science curricula usually don’t use these devices, so many of them have been left in closets for years, and school officials are eager to get rid of them.

The main benefit of the Illinois program is that there is no charge, Klebe said. While it would be okay to throw these materials in the trash, some districts have paid $1,500 to companies that specialize in disposing of low-level radioactive waste.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico also has a program to remove radioactive materials. The Offsite Source Recovery Project has so far collected materials from about 600 sites nationwide, mostly universities and private industry, said project manager Julia Whitworth. Probably less than 50 involved high schools.

In 2005, Los Alamos removed three radioactive gammators from three high schools in San Antonio, Texas. Gammators, which contain encapsulated cesium-137, were used in science labs decades ago to study the effects of gamma rays on seeds, cells, and other objects.

The federal government distributed about 150 gammators to schools in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Atoms for Peace program, which was aimed at promoting new uses for nuclear materials.

Federal policy has changed since those days, particularly since 9/11. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued new standards in May calling for nuclear materials to be collected and disposed of, Whitworth said. The Offsite Source Recovery Project has shifted its focus “from waste management to threat reduction.”

“These kinds of things could be used by terrorists or could fall into the hands of people who don’t know what they are,” she said. “There have been cases of people who were accidentally contaminated, leading to loss of life,” but none of these events involved U.S. schools.