An ideal sealed source life-cycle

Conference · Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2009

OSTI ID:1003793

Tompkins, Joseph Andrew ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory

In the last 40 years, barriers to compliant and timely disposition of radioactive sealed sources have become apparent. The story starts with the explosive growth of nuclear gauging technologies in the 1960s. Dozens of companies in the US manufactured sources and many more created nuclear solutions to industrial gauging problems. Today they do not yet know how many Cat 1, 2, or 3 sources there are in the US. There are, at minimum, tens of thousands of sources, perhaps hundreds of thousands of sources. Affordable transportation solutions to consolidate all of these sources and disposition pathways for these sources do not exist. The root problem seems to be a lack of necessary regulatory framework that has allowed all of these problems to accumulate with no national plan for solving the problem. In the 1960s, Pu-238 displaced Pu-239 for most neutron and alpha source applications. In the 1970s, the availability of inexpensive Am-241 resulted in a proliferation of low energy gamma sources used in nuclear gauging, well logging, pacemakers, and X-ray fluorescence applications for example. In the 1980s, rapid expansion of worldwide petroleum exploration resulted in the expansion of Am-241 sources into international locations. Improvements of technology and regulation resulted in a change in isotopic distribution as Am-241 made Pu-239 and Pu-238 obsolete. Many early nuclear gauge technologies have been made obsolete as they were replaced by non-nuclear technoogies. With uncertainties in source end of life disposition and increased requirements for sealed source security, nuclear gauging technology is the last choice for modern process engineering gauging solutions. Over the same period, much was learned about licensing LLW disposition facilities as evident by the closure of early disposition facilities like Maxey Flats. The current difficulties in sealed source disposition start with adoption of the NLLW policy act of 1985, which created the state LLW compact system they we have today. This regulation created a new regulatory framework seen as promising at the time. However, now they recognize that, despite the good intentions, the NIJWP/85 has not solved any source disposition problems. The answer to these sealed source disposition problems is to adopt a philosophy to correct these regulatory issues, determine an interim solution, execute that solution until there is a minimal backlog of sources to deal with, and then let the mechanisms they have created solve this problem into the foreseeable future. The primary philosophical tenet of the ideal sealed source life cycle follows. You do not allow the creation (or importation) of any source whose use cannot be justified, which cannot be affordably shipped, or that does not have a well-delinated and affordable disposition pathway. The path forward dictates that we fix the problem by embracing the Ideal Source Life cycle. In figure 1, we can see some of the elements of the ideal source life cycle. The life cycle is broken down into four portions, manufacture, use, consolidation, and disposition. These four arbitrary elements allow them to focus on the ideal life cycle phases that every source should go through between manufacture and final disposition. As we examine the various phases of the sealed source life cycle, they pick specific examples and explore the adoption of the ideal life cycle model.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1003793
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-09-03101; LA-UR-09-3101; TRN: US1100513
• Resource Relation: Conference: 41st National conference on radiation control (CRCPD) ; May 18, 2009 ; Colombus, OH
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

7
61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
ALPHA SOURCES
CARDIAC PACEMAKERS
CLOSURES
DISTRIBUTION
EXPLORATION
EXPLOSIVES
FLUORESCENCE
GAMMA SOURCES
LICENSING
LIFE CYCLE
NEUTRONS
PETROLEUM
PROLIFERATION
RADIATIONS
REGULATIONS
SEALED SOURCES
SECURITY
WELL LOGGING
NESDPS Office of Nuclear Energy Space and Defense Power Systems