Successful Experience in Migrating from Radioactive Irradiators to X-ray Irradiators for Blood and Medical Research Applications

This report describes the successful experience and lessons learned by Mount Sinai in the last 10 years from the migration of radioactive irradiators to X-ray irradiators for blood and medical research applications. This was done in order to reduce and permanently remove the security risk of possible terrorist use of radioactive materials as Radioactive Dispersal Devices (RDD), also known as dirty bombs.For this task, such measures included hardening the security, increasing the removal time required to remove the radioactive source so as to allow Local Law Enforcement Agencies (LLEA) to timely respond, and enchaining the security equipment with state of the art technology. Mount Sinai also introduced single-person-operation so as to limit the number of people who have access to such radioactive materials from 145 researchers to only a few individuals. The adoption of such measures reduced the radiological risk significantly; however, the best way to remove the permanent risk of radiological security is to replace these high-activity radioactive sources with x-ray technology.After a few years of security enhancement efforts, in 2013, Mount Sinai purchased its first X-ray irradiator to investigate the feasibility of using an X-ray irradiator instead of cesium irradiators for research purposes to irradiate cells and small animals. Mount Sinai successfully disposed all of its cesium irradiators and as of January 2018, Mount Sinai, as one of the largest Health care institutions in NY, has migrated completely to alternative technology and has permanently removed the radiological security risk.Some of the lessons learned from this experience include the following: Health physicists or and medical physicists should work with researchers closely; institutions should take advantages of the US-OSRP program as well as the CIRP program to reduce the financial burden of disposal of cesium irradiators and the cost of new x-ray irritators; Self-cooled and self-shielded irradiators are preferable; x-ray irradiators should be housed in an air conditioned room.