HEALTH: CLEANUP COST $1.1 MILLION

Southeast Missouri State University expects to spend $1.1 million to clean up radioactive contamination in the school's Magill Hall science building.

The university has had to reallocate funds in its budget to pay for the costly work, said Dr. Ken Dobbins, Southeast's president.

Dobbins said the university has reallocated $300,000 previously budgeted for academic equipment and expects the other $800,000 to come from personnel savings from various staffing vacancies and from university reserve funds.

The university will seek money from insurance companies for workmen's compensation to help pay for the testing of university employees and others who may have been exposed to the radioactive contamination.

Dobbins said it was unclear if the university can recover any insurance money for such testing.

Dobbins said the cleanup cost is almost certain to prevent the university from adding to its reserve fund balance.

Funds authorized

In July, the regents authorized the university to pay $600,000 to Science Applications International Corp. for the first phase of cleanup work, including assessing the extent of the contamination.

The regents, behind closed doors late last month, agreed to spend another $500,000 for the remaining cleanup work.

School officials only recently disclosed the added spending.

The decontamination work by Science Applications began Monday and could take four to five weeks to complete, said Dr. Chris McGowan, dean of the College of Science and Mathematics.

The price tag includes the cost of testing employees and others to see if they suffered from exposure to radioactive americium-241.

The university found in February that two small vials of americium-241 had leaked from a safe inside a basement storage room in Magill Hall. The leak was discovered after an inspection by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Science Applications has an eight-member crew working to decontaminate the Magill Hall basement. Its workers were expected to proceed with decontamination of Room 242 on the building's second floor today and Friday while students are on fall break.

The basement and Room 242 have been closed to the public for some time.

A wooden wall has been installed outside Magill Hall, and contaminated materials were being placed in a truck container to be hauled away to an approved radioactive waste disposal site.

"They are going to take out anything that is contaminated and decontaminate floors the walls," McGowan said. Some of the cleanup work will involve grinding the surfaces of floors and walls.

Cleanup workers are wearing protective clothing and respirators, McGowan said.

The cleanup work won't keep students out of the building this fall as classes will continue to meet.

"By this time next month, we should have complete access to the basement," McGowan said.

Exposure tests on university employees and others who may have been exposed to the radioactive contamination are expected by late October, McGowan said. School officials have reported no major health problems.