The National Park Service was storing three
buckets full of highly radioactive uranium in the visitor area of its
Grand Canyon museum for nearly two decades, according to the park safety
manager.
The 5-gallon buckets were located
near the taxidermy exhibit, and one was so full of uranium ore that it
couldn’t be sealed, according to Elston “Swede” Stephenson, a manager
who sent a rogue email to all Park Service employees earlier this month,
AZ Central reports.
Tour
groups, often including children, sometimes spent 30 minutes or more
near the taxidermy exhibit for demonstrations. Using standards set by
the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Stephenson calculated that
children could have been exposed to doses of radiation above federal
safety standards within three seconds. Adults could have been exposed to
dangerous doses in under 30 seconds.
For
unknown reasons, the three buckets full of uranium were moved from a
basement in Grand Canyon park headquarters to the Grand Canyon museum
when it opened in 2000, according to Stephenson. The buckets were
discovered by accident in March 2018 when the hobbyist teenage son of a
park employee brought a Geiger counter into the taxidermy-collection
room.
Workers moved the buckets to another
part of the museum after the discovery, but they remained on site until
June 18, 2018, a few days after Stephenson was made aware of the buckets
and reported them to Park Service officials. Technicians wearing
dishwashing gloves used a mop handle to move them into a truck and drive
them offsite, he told AZ Central.
