Scrap Yard Portal Monitor Intercepts Lost Ge-68 Medical Generator
A medical radiopharmacy lost a Ge-68/Ga-68 generator in mid-2024 — eighteen months later, a vehicle portal monitor at a Wisconsin scrap yard caught it before it reached the shredder. The system worked exactly as designed; the inventory failure that let it disappear is the real story.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Date Reported | February 2026 (Event: January 20–23, 2026) |
| Location | Wisconsin, USA |
| Incident Type | Lost Source / Interdiction |
| Source | Germanium-68/Gallium-68 generator (~20 mCi at loss; ~4.7 mCi at discovery) |
| Confidence | 5/5 — NRC Event Report |
What Happened
A Ge-68/Ga-68 generator used to produce Ga-68 for PET scans was lost by a medical radiopharmacy and entered the municipal waste/scrap stream. The device (Eckert and Ziegler GalliaPharm batch FQGE07) was misplaced in an unlicensed, publicly accessible area of the radiopharmacy in mid-2024. On January 20, 2026, a vehicle portal monitor at a Wisconsin scrap yard triggered an alarm on an incoming load. Site personnel isolated the load. State regulators traced the serial number to the original owner. The radiopharmacy recovered the undamaged generator three days later.
Operational Lessons
Scrap yard portal monitors proved their ROI in a single event. Without that detector, this generator would have been melted, contaminating a domestic steel batch. The cost of the portal monitor versus potential decontamination runs to millions.
Ge-68 decays to Ga-68, which emits positrons that annihilate to produce two 511 keV photons. Standard scrap yard PVT monitors optimized for Cs-137 (662 keV) and Co-60 (1173/1332 keV) can detect this signature — provided discriminator thresholds are set correctly. Operators should verify their low-energy sensitivity window.
The pharmacy lost a Category 3/4 source for over a year without realizing it. "Expired" or "decayed" generators get moved to low-security storage areas where they're vulnerable to accidental disposal. Physical inventory intervals need enforcement.