Final Status Survey for the Largest Decommissioning Project on Earth
- Millennium Services, Inc., 222 Creekstone Ridge, Woodstock, GA 30188 (United States)
- BNG America, 804 S. Illinois Avenue, Oak Ridge, TN 37830 (United States)
- Shonka Research Associates, Inc., 704 S. Illinois Avenue, Oak Ridge, TN 37830 (United States)
To assist the United States Department of Energy's (US DOE's) re-industrialization efforts at its gaseous diffusion site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, known as the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), the US DOE awarded a 6-year Decontamination and Decommissioning (D and D) contract to BNG America (formerly BNFL Inc.) in 1997. The ETTP 3-Building D and D Project included the removal and disposition of the materials and equipment from the K-33, K-31, and K-29 Gaseous Diffusion Plant buildings. The three buildings comprise more than 4.8 million square feet (446,000 square meters) of floor surface area and more than 350 million pounds (148 million kilograms) of hazardous and radioactively contaminated material, making it the largest nuclear D and D project in progress anywhere in the world. The logistical hurdles involved in a project of this scope and magnitude required an extensive amount of Engineering and Health Physics professionals. In order to accomplish the Final Status Survey (FSS) for a project of this scope, the speed and efficiency of automated survey equipment was essential. Surveys of floors, structural steel and ceilings up to 60 feet (18 meters) were required. The FSS had to be expanded to include additional remediation and surveys due to characterization surveys and assumptions regarding the nature and extent of contamination provided by the US DOE. Survey design and technical bases had to consider highly variable constituents; including uranium from depleted to low enrichment, variable levels of Technetium-99 and transuranic nuclides, which were introduced into the cascade during the 1960's when recycled uranium (RU) from Savannah River was re-enriched at the facility. The RU was transported to unexpected locations from leaks in the cascade by complex building ventilation patterns. The primary survey tool used for the post remediation and FSS was the Surface Contamination Monitor (SCM) and the associated Survey Information Management System (SIMS), developed by Shonka Research Associates, Inc. (SRA). Final Status Radiological surveys have been performed over the last year on a 24-hour per day and seven day per week basis. As many as eight SCMs have been in use at any one time. Each SCM can perform over 250,000 measurements per hour, simultaneously collecting both scan and static measurement requirements to meet FSS regulatory requirements. Thus, efficient management and quality control of giga-bytes of data was needed. In addition, some surveys were accomplished with traditional instrumentation and with some using other automated systems such as smear counters. The FSS Reports required integration of all of the data in a format that permitted undemanding verification by DOE using the ORISE/ESSAP IVT contractor. A project of this scope and magnitude could not have been accomplished without the use of the SCM and SIMS. This paper reports on the survey and logistical issues that required ingenuity of the entire 1,700-person workforce to resolve. In particular, this paper summarizes the issues addressed and resolved by the integrated team of survey technicians, subject matter experts (SMEs), radiological engineers, data processing staff and BNG America management. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 13023, Tucson, AZ, 85732-3023 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21208724
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-09-WM-06266; TRN: US09V1035079511
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Waste Management 2006 Symposium - WM'06 - Global Accomplishments in Environmental and Radioactive Waste Management: Education and Opportunity for the Next Generation of Waste Management Professionals, Tucson, AZ (United States), 26 Feb - 2 Mar 2006; Other Information: Country of input: France
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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