Scoping Study on Developing Alternatives to Radionuclide-based Logging Technologies

Technical Report · Fri Nov 06 00:00:00 EST 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1432961· OSTI ID:1432961

Badruzzaman, Ahmed ^[1]; Dowla, Farid ^[2]; Chien, Hual-Te ^[3]; Antolak, Arlyn ^[4]; Schmidt, Andrea ^[2]; Bakhtiari, Susan ^[3]

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1. Pacific Consultant and Engineers, Sacramento, CA (United States)
2. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
3. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
4. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Subsurface devices utilizing radioisotopes, ²⁴¹Am and ¹³⁷Cs, are critical for reservoir characterization and related completion and production decisions. Being small, mobile and used widely worldwide, these sources can pose radiological dispersal device (RDD) security risks. The security concerns have been exacerbated by recent stolen or missing source incidents, existence of a black-market on sources in general, and attempts at their malevolent use. Consequently, in addition to decades-long industry effort to develop non-nuclear and nuclear-based alternative logging technologies, governments, international agencies, and national labs are actively assessing measures and technologies to mitigate risks of such sources. Risk mitigation efforts include enhanced regulations, source-use guidelines, research and development on electronic tracking of sources, and continued exploration of alternative technologies by both the petroleum industry and U S Department of Energy (DOE). In recent years, the petroleum industry has continued to explore new nuclear-based and nonnuclear alternative techniques and several DOE-sponsored reports have been prepared on the topic. However, there has been no significant synergy between the industry and DOE efforts in developing alternatives.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-07NA27344
• OSTI ID: 1432961
• Report Number(s): LLNL-TR-679101
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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