RSCS COVID-19 Response Plans

covid-19 - RSCSIn response to the COVID-19 viral outbreak, RSCS has updated our Business Continuity Plan, which includes requirements for responding to an outbreak of contagious disease.  This plan details several measures to protect our workers, minimize business disruptions and respond to worsening conditions as they are identified by Local / Federal Government.  Specifically, our plan details the following:

  • Personal hygiene measures
  • Enhanced cleaning / disinfecting of work areas
  • Use of PPE for contamination control
  • Increased on-hand inventory of consumables / parts
  • Staff training on health & safety precautions, use of cloud-based file storage/sharing systems for remote work, implementation of response plans
  • Social distancing, split shifts and remote work schedules
  • Safe handling of incoming / outgoing packages
  • Travel restrictions
  • Quarantine measures and temporary office closures if ordered by Local / Federal Government or if in-company outbreak detected
  • Notification to customers / vendors

RSCS plans to minimize the impact of this emerging COVID-19 outbreak through the following measures:

  • Defense in depth – Staff in the Business Services Group and Calibration Laboratory are cross trained, health physicists and engineering staff working on projects have a similar knowledge base, pool of available radiological technicians typically exceeds staffing needs, staff substitutions are available in the case of illness.
  • Escalating levels of response based on changing conditions

    Initial response plan calls for social isolating as much as possible through use of remote work for corporate and projects staff and split shifts for Calibration Laboratory to allow for increased distancing of staff during the work-day.

    If conditions worsen, or in-house staff contract the illness, then the next level of response includes isolation of ill staff and quarantine and monitoring of staff who had close contact with ill staff.  As the majority of our staff can work remotely, quarantines should have minimal impact on the delivery of services to clients.  Calibration Laboratory staff can substitute for each other minimizing the impact of absenteeism on instrument calibration turn times.  Staff who work at client sites have substitutes available from our bench of health physicists, engineers and radiological technicians to ensure schedules can be maintained.

If mandatory quarantines, travel bans or other Local / Federal Government orders are imposed, then RSCS will comply as required and will resume projects and calibrations once orders are lifted.  While we have no control over this contingency, we commit to supporting our customers through work that can be accomplished remotely as much as possible. 

We will continue to monitor this situation closely and will update information on our webpage on our response plans if they should change in the future.  

 

RSCS Presenting at the BPIG CPUG Meeting This Week!

EPRI BPIG CPUG - RSCSMatt Darois and Peter McNeil of our Environmental Engineering Group will be attending the Annual EPRI Buried Pipe Integrity Group (BPIG)  and the Cathodic Protection Users Group (CPUG) Meeting in Kissimmee, Florida. These two groups collaborate with each other every year to support operating nuclear power plants with buried asset health and mitigation strategies. 

Matt Darois will be presenting on “Using Surface Geophysical NDE and 3D Data Processing to Evaluate Pipe Backfill Characteristics”.  This presentation details the use of Wenner 4-Pin Soil Resistivity measurements along with ground penetrating radar data to assess the backfill characteristics and corrosion rates for buried pipes.  The benefits of using of modeling software to combine and illustrate these data sets will also be discussed.

If attending BPIG/CPUG, please come by our booth to say hello, and stop in to hear Matt’s presentation on this innovative assessment methodology.

RSCS Attending the HPS 53rd Midyear Meeting in Bethesda, MD

RSCS is exhibiting at the 2020 Midyear Health Physics Society Meeting in Bethesda Maryland. Come by booth #101 to say hello, learn about our consulting and project management services, and see a demonstration of our Sim-TEQ training simulators. We look forward to seeing you there!

RSCS Welcomes Ellen Anderson to Our Team!

Ellen Anderson - RSCSRSCS is pleased to announce that Ellen Anderson has joined our team as Director of Radiological Services and will support strategic planning initiatives and business development for our Project Services divisions serving the nuclear power industry.

Ellen has spent the past decade as Nuclear Energy Institute’s (NEI) Director of Radiation Safety and International Liaison where she provided regulatory and applied health physics/radiation protection expertise in the areas of occupational and public radiation safety to member utilities, industry organizations, including EPRI, INPO, ANI, and international radiological protection organizations. At NEI, Ellen led their Radiation Safety Task Force, and participated on the former Delivering the Nuclear Promise RP team.

Ellen has dedicated nearly 4 decades to the nuclear power industry in the areas of radiation protection, emergency preparedness, regulatory affairs, nuclear oversight and security. Prior to NEI, she held numerous industry positions, including Radiation Protection Manager at the Quad Cities Generating Station, Fleet Radiation Protection Manager for First Energy Nuclear Operating Company, interim Radiation Protection Manager at the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Plant, Regulatory Affairs Manager at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, Quality Assurance Manager for PSEG and Emergency Preparedness Manager for the Palisades and Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plants.

Internationally, Ellen is recognized for her radiation protection expertise as a member of the World Nuclear Association (WNA) Radiation Protection Working Group in London, and through her participation on several Nuclear Energy Agency/ISOE Working Groups including chair of the Expert Group on Severe Accident Management. She has also participated on several International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) radiation protection consultancies.

We are proud to have Ellen join our team and look forward to her contributions toward the growth of our company as we continue to expand our presence in the nuclear power industry worldwide.

RSCS Attending the JPEO-CBRND Industry Day in Bethesda MD, November 12, 2019

RSCS will attend the JPEO-CBRND Consortium General Membership Meeting (GMM) & Joint JPEO-CBRND/DHS CWMD Industry Day in Bethesda MD this week on November 12.  This event brings together consortium members and Government to discuss upcoming opportunities and to interact and exchange information regarding upcoming prototyping requirements for the CWMD Other Transaction Agreement (OTA). Please visit us if attending to learn more about our Sim-TEQ Training Simulator Line currently deployed at several naval and commercial nuclear facilities.

RSCS Welcomed to Seabrook by Town Managers at 35th Anniversary Open House

For Immediate Release

September 21, 2019

Radiation Safety & Control Services, Inc. (RSCS), a firm that specializes in project and support services to users of nuclear and radioactive material, celebrated their 30th year in business with a Corporate Open House at their new facility in Seabrook NH.  This event included a formal Ribbon Cutting Ceremony with the Seabrook Town Manager William Manzi and Seabrook Selectmen Aboul Khan, and Selectwomen Theresa Kyle and Ella Brown.  These local officials welcomed RSCS to their business community and shared in the celebration of this milestone anniversary.

RSCS was founded in 1989 by Eric Darois, Frederick Straccia, and James Tarzia.  These colleagues had met as students at UMass Lowell’s Radiological Sciences Program and worked together as Health Physicists at Seabrook Nuclear Power station.  They began their endeavor by offering radon testing and mitigation services, and quickly grew the business by acquiring an instrument calibration business, and hosting Radiation Safety Officer courses throughout the USA.  Before long, their expertise in health physics was called upon by radioactive materials licensees whom needed consulting services, including the 3 Yankee Power Companies that were undergoing decommissioning of their Connecticut Yankee, Maine Yankee and Yankee Rowe nuclear plants.  To meet the demand for these services, the Executive Directors expanded their team of health physicists and radiological engineers, and from there the trajectory of RSCS began to rise as the company continued to land contracts for consulting and radiological project management work. 

Thirty years since inception, the company now has a staff of over 200 professionals who have established themselves as experts in nuclear decommissioning, environmental monitoring, complex modeling, and regulatory compliance.  RSCS has supported most operating nuclear plants with consulting services and has managed radiological controls at plants that have been decommissioned or are undergoing decommissioning currently.  RSCS has also diversified its services to include staff augmentation, providing seconded work forces for nuclear power outages, and has expanded to include an engineering project management group to support complex remediation efforts. Their staff of health physicists and radiological technicians also serve medical, industrial and military licensees. The company continues to service radiation detection instrumentation in their calibration laboratory, and they have also branched into manufacturing, providing realistic radiation detection simulation instruments in their SIM-Teq product line that has benefited hundreds of client’s training programs on the proper use of instrumentation.

As RSCS embarks on their fourth decade in business, they look forward to continuing to grow their team to meet the emerging needs for professionals and nuclear technicians at operating nuclear power plants and decommissioning sites.  They also plan to continue expansion of their manufactured products division, which directly supports local NH businesses whom provide the company with parts fabrication and sub-assembly services.  RSCS is proud to be a NH employer, and thanks Seabrook for their warm welcome to this business community.

For additional information, please contact Jennifer Collins, 603-778-2871 * [email protected]

 

 

RSCS & UMASS Lowell Welcome Our New International Intern Roberto Ciardi

We are pleased to announce that RSCS, in partnership with the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, has sponsored Mr. Roberto Ciardi to complete his Master’s degree thesis on an international collaboration with the University of Pisa and the Sant’Anna School of Pisa in Italy.  Roberto received his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2015. Upon completing his thesis, he will receive his Master’s degree in Embedded Software Systems from the Sant’Anna School of Pisa in collaboration with University of Pisa.  

Roberto is from Empoli, Italy (near Florence) where his family operates a private veterinary practice.  Roberto is a member of the Mensa Association, an international association for individuals who score in the 98th percentile of IQ (intelligence Quotient).  He ranked 2nd place in a national logic test, the “Brain Test” organized by Mensa in 2017.  He has been active in the sport of Soccer since age 6 and has played both scholastically and professionally in Italy. 

Roberto will be working with scientists at RSCS and at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell to complete his Master’s thesis which will involve researching new technology for data collection and automation of advanced radiation detectors. 

We welcome Roberto to the RSCS Family and look forward to being part of the completion of his educational goals!

Ron Thurlow Joins Our Team

RSCS is pleased to welcome Ron Thurlow to our growing management team as our Director of Operations! Mr. Thurlow has an M.S. and B.S. in Radiological Sciences and Protection and is certified by the American Board of Health Physics.  Mr. Thurlow has served as the President of the Health Physics Society Power Reactor Section and has been a contributor and principle investigator for various EPRI Guideline documents. 

Mr. Thurlow has 36 years of experience and has held various technical and leadership positions in nuclear power facilities, including Radiation Protection Manager, Fleet Radiation Protection and Chemistry Manager, Maintenance Director, and Nuclear Oversight Manager. Mr. Thurlow also served as an officer in the Unites States Air Force where he was the officer in charge of word-wide radiological response and consultation for the Air Force. Mr., Thurlow’s specialties include operational radiation protection, internal and external dosimetry assessments, leadership development, emergency response, industrial safety and human performance. 

We are proud to have Ron Thurlow join our team and look forward to his contributions to our corporate operations.

RSCS Exhibiting at HPS Annual Meeting in Orlando FL

RSCS is exhibiting this week at the 2019 Annual Health Physics Society Meeting in Orlando Florida.  We always look forward to this meeting as it provides an opportunity to network with our long-term friends and colleagues in the Health Physics community, and catch up with our fellow alumni from UMass Lowell.  If attending this meeting, please come by to say hello at booth #415.

SCM V Demonstration at the NSWC Industry Day in West Bethesda MD, June 11, 2019

SCM-V Surface Contamination MonitorRSCS is showcasing our latest version of the Surface Contamination Monitor, the SCM V, at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Industry Day held in West Bethesda, MD on June 11, 2019. 

The SCM V builds upon the high-performance specifications of earlier versions of this model that have been employed successfully for large area surveys at DOE, DOD and commercial sites since 2000.  Based upon a positional sensitive proportional counting  (PSPC) detector system that was introduced in the 1990s by Shonka Research Associates, this contamination monitor provides a highly efficient and accurate surveying system to locate and map the distribution of contamination on surfaces. 

The SCM’s PSPC detector segments a large area detector into smaller units by measuring the time it takes for a pulse to travel along a biased anode wire.  Based on the time differential between the travel time to each counter, the exact location an event occurred along the anode can be determined.  The hardware provides for regions of interest that effectively segment the entire anode wire into 5 cm detectors.  This detector is coupled to a motorized cart that maintains a fixed geometry from the surface and controls the speed forward to provide a consistent speed of travel forward in 5 cm increments.  The data is continually fed to a processing unit that bins the events detected into 25 cm2 pixels.  The benefits of this design are that the overall background is reduced to that detected by small detectors while the efficiency is increased to that provided by the larger detection area along the entire length of the anode wire.  The resulting system collects 400 measurements per square meter while operating in dynamic mode.

Events detected are continuously logged and then combined into survey reports that graphically display the distribution of counts detected along the travel path.  This position correlated data can be used to isolate areas that are below or above an action level.  Secondary surveys with the SCM in static mode can be performed to obtain highly accurate cumulative frequency distribution plots.

This latest version of the SCM provides several improvements over prior models, including the use of lightweight materials that allow for easy shipment of the system.  The detector height can be adjusted to manage surface irregularities or movement to a different location.  In addition, the system now employs two independent motors that are allow for cornering and reverse movement of the cart.  The detector design has also been modified to allow for easy replacement of mylar windows in the field.  These hardware improvements were coupled to several electronic enhancements, including the use of field programmable gate array chip sets that allow for improved data acquisition for programming and processing, the integration of a robot operating system that provides improved message passing between processors, and a wider signal voltage window that collects more signal pulses and improves the overall efficiency of the system by up to 70% over the previous models.

The SCM V will greatly benefit applications that require the survey of large areas, such as decommissioning sites.  Please contact us for additional information on the SCM V and its applicability to your survey projects.