REAL-TIME IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF ASBESTOS AND CONCRETE MATERIALS WITH RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION

Technical Report · Fri May 10 04:00:00 EDT 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/793818· OSTI ID:793818

XU, X George ^[1]; Zhang, X C

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1. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Concrete and asbestos-containing materials were widely used in DOE building construction in the 1940s and 1950s. Over the years, many of these porous materials have been contaminated with radioactive sources, on and below the surface. To improve current practice in identifying hazardous materials and in characterizing radioactive contamination, an interdisciplinary team from Rensselaer has conducted research in two aspects: (1) to develop terahertz time-domain spectroscopy and imaging system that can be used to analyze environmental samples such as asbestos in the field, and (2) to develop algorithms for characterizing the radioactive contamination depth profiles in real-time in the field using gamma spectroscopy. The basic research focused on the following: (1) mechanism of generating of broadband pulsed radiation in terahertz region, (2) optimal free-space electro-optic sampling for asbestos, (3) absorption and transmission mechanisms of asbestos in THz region, (4) the role of asbestos sample conditions on the temporal and spectral distributions, (5) real-time identification and mapping of asbestos using THz imaging, (7) Monte Carlo modeling of distributed contamination from diffusion of radioactive materials into porous concrete and asbestos materials, (8) development of unfolding algorithms for gamma spectroscopy, and (9) portable and integrated spectroscopy systems for field testing in DOE. Final results of the project show that the combination of these innovative approaches has the potential to bring significant improvement in future risk reduction and cost/time saving in DOE's D and D activities.

• Research Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: (US)
• DOE Contract Number: FG07-98ER62706
• OSTI ID: 793818
• Report Number(s): DOE/ER/62706; EMSP 65004
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
ABSORPTION
ALGORITHMS
ASBESTOS
CONCRETE
CONCRETES
CONTAMINATION
DIFFUSION
GAMMA SPECTROSCOPY
HAZARDOUS MATERIALS
IONIZING RADIATION
POROUS MATERIALS
RADIATIONS
RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS
SAMPLING
SIMULATION
SPECTROSCOPY
TERAHERTZ