https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-024-05551-y
Regular Article
Emergency management in a Nuclear Medicine Department: flooding scenario
1
National Center for Radiation Protection and Computational Physics, Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), Rome, Italy
2
ASL Roma 6, Ariccia, Italy
3
Italian Workers’ Compensation Authority (INAIL), Monte Porzio Catone, Italy
4
IBA Protontherapy, Trento, Italy
5
Medical Physics Unit, Istituto Romagnolo per lo Studio Dei Tumori (IRST) “Dino Amadori”, Meldola, Italy
6
Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, Rome, Italy
Received:
15
February
2024
Accepted:
10
August
2024
Published online:
6
September
2024
The core of a system of protection and safety in workplaces is to identify the hazards and assess the risks to safety and health of workers and population. Directive 2013/59/Euratom for radiation protection requires an assessment of potential emergency exposure situations and associated public and occupational exposures. This kind of assessment involves the identification of maximum-credible accident scenarios. In the healthcare sector, radioactive substances are used both in vivo and in vitro for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. The main applications take place in Nuclear Medicine Departments, where unsealed radioactive materials for the preparation of radiopharmaceuticals and liquid radioactive waste produced by excreta of patients are present. In this context, flooding is an event that can become critical when the cause is internal to the hospital or catastrophic when it is external: such cases are now statistically more and more relevant due to the overall increase all around the world of extreme weather events, and Nuclear Medicine Departments show a high degree of vulnerability and exposure due to the presence and utilization of unsealed radioactive substance in high-density population areas. In the present work, different scenarios of flooding leading to a potential radiological emergency inside a Nuclear Medicine Department are discussed, both in radiopharmacy laboratories and in the areas for the storage of liquid radioactive waste from diagnostic and therapeutic units. The risk assessment is conducted, evaluating the dispersion of the radioactive materials involved and the resulting exposure of emergency workers and of the representative person in the population. Finally, suitable measures to respond to the emergency are suggested.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2024. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
