Wisconsin Ge-68 Generator Recovery: Defense-in-Depth Success
A scrap yard portal monitor caught a medical Ge-68 generator lost for over a year. The system worked — but the inventory failure that let it disappear is the real story.
| Date | Reported February 9, 2026 (Event: January 20–23) |
| Location | Wisconsin, USA |
| Incident Type | Lost Source / Recovery |
| Source | Germanium-68 (Ge-68) / Gallium-68 Generator (~20–50 mCi) |
| Confidence | 5/5 — NRC Event Report |
What Happened
A Ge-68 generator used to produce Ga-68 for PET scans was lost by a medical radiopharmacy and entered the municipal waste/scrap stream. On January 20, a vehicle portal monitor at a Wisconsin scrap yard triggered an alarm on an incoming load.
Site personnel isolated the load. State regulators used the device's serial number to trace it to Wisconsin Medical Radiopharmacy, which had lost control of the device in Summer 2024 but failed to notice or report it. They initially estimated activity at 4.7 mCi; reactive inspection determined it was closer to 20 mCi.
Operational Lessons
Scrap yard portal monitors proved their ROI in a single event. Without that detector, this generator would have been melted (see: Banten), contaminating a domestic steel batch. The cost of the portal monitor versus potential decontamination runs to millions.
511 keV detection works on standard PVT monitors. 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.
Inventory blind spots at medical facilities. 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.