The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection announced today that it recovered in Maryland the missing nuclear gauge a Franklin County company lost in West Virginia on May 3. The device has not been tampered with or damaged.
“We are relieved that the nuclear gauge has been recovered and that no radioactive materials were released,” DEP Bureau of Radiation Protection Director David Allard said. “The agency thanks the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, West Virginia officials, the public and the citizen who discovered the gauge along the road for the combined effort to find it.”
The nuclear gauge has been returned to Valley Quarries Inc. of Chambersburg, Franklin County, which lost the Troxler Model 3430 gauge when it fell off the company’s truck on I-81 in West Virginia between mile markers 17 and 24.
The gauge is normally stored in a locked yellow transportation container when not in use at construction sites for taking measurements in the ground, but it apparently fell out of the container on the back of the company’s truck during transport to another work site.