25,000 gallons of water in the company's source pool were contaminated. It is unclear whether regulators were unable to recall all of the medical supplies, consumer products, and food products that had been shipped from the facility and were believed to have been contaminated in the incident. The Georgia state task force on the incident found in the ensuing investigation that RSI had told the Georgia Department of Human Resources that the DOE had the equipment to isolate and remove a leaking capsule quickly, but that the equipment actually had to be built after the leak was detected. If the irradiation industry realizes its vision of thousands of irradiation facilities around the globe, there will likely not be enough cobalt to go around, and the cesium-137, and the DOE, are waiting in the wings. On the surface, this may not seem alarming, except that conductivity, under wet conditions, can be corrosive , and crevices is the source capsules can conceivably contain higher concentrations of conductive materials, accelerating corrosion where it is not needed.
Corrosion can also attack the integrity of the source pool itself.
Expressing concerns, and setting guidelines to monitor corrosion, the NRC granted the request. Many people believe that while there hasn't been a major accident at an irradiation facility in some time, it is not a question of if there will be another accident in the future. The record of the industry as a whole is not pretty. The NRC has recorded 54 accidents at 132 irradiation plants worldwide since 1974. The future is a big question mark for the irradiation industry.