Basically unless you were having a very prolonged and loving relationship with the bucket, you were exposed to nothing of consequence. That doesn’t excuse the morons who kept this stuff, and if a kid took a souvenir home or there had been a fire it could have been a lot worse. They may have also had unacceptable levels of radon. If I worked there I’d want to know more, but just as a visitor I’d shrug and get on with life.
I’m wondering why they used R instead of Sv though. It’s a single source with a single quality factor, and were only concerned with the impact on humans.
Roentgens are historical units of exposure, it's simply what a lot of older meters read.
Roentgens can be assumed to safely equal RADs (although they don't, conversion is less than 1 for kV), the historical unit for "Radiation Absorbed Dose." For photons this would be equal to REM "Radiation Equivalent Man."
All old units; conversion to S.I., 100 rad = 1 Gray (J/Kg), 100 rem = 1 Sievert.
Essentially, who ever wrote the report was old and conservative.
The occupational risk is also essentially nil. This is much ado about nada.
5gal buckets are designed to be handled by all manner of people who don't have enough time to give a crap and still get to their destination without leaking.
A properly sealed 5gal bucket will remain air tight even if it's bouncing around inside a tote in the bed of a truck on rural gravel roads for ~10mo (the tote flooded at some point but the bucket wound up dry).
Sitting in a cabinet the risk of dust making it out of the bucket would have been nonexistent so long as the lid was on it.
I’m wondering why they used R instead of Sv though. It’s a single source with a single quality factor, and were only concerned with the impact on humans.