Although I-123 has a 14 hour half-life, it is not uncommon to have I-121 
"contamination" present.  I-121 beta decays (2.2 hour half-life) to Te-121 
which has a 16.8 day half-life. Since this medical treatment was done a month 
ago that I would expect that at this time all you would see is the Te-121

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of 
Mathiasen, Glenn D.
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2012 5:30 AM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: Powernet: RE: Te-121 on a whole body count, medical or something else?

Stephen,

A quick Google search indicates that Te-121 is expected in the Sodium Iodide 
I-123, no explanation of why it's there.
________________________________
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of 
Holmes, Stephen J
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2012 11:06 PM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: Powernet: Te-121 on a whole body count, medical or something else?
We recently had an individual, arriving on site for our outage, alarm our 
entrance portal monitors. We whole body counted him and identified peaks at 
507.4 and 573.2 keV. We determined Te-121 to be the likely suspect. The 
individual said he had a medical treatment about a month before and had been 
administered I-123. This seems to be the likely source, but I don't understand 
how an I-123 medical treatment would result in Te-121.

Can anyone explain to me where the Te-121 would have come from? Is there 
another nuclide which would give us these peaks?

Thanks,

Stephen J Holmes
Sr. Plant Health Physicist, CENG-RE Ginna NPP
[email protected]
585-771-3577


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