Waste Technology Section
Source Recovery
Ongoing Activities
Conditioning Disused Sealed Radioactive Sources
The Agency advises and assists Member States in the safe management of disused sealed radioactive sources including the conditioning of disused Radium-226 sources. Since the conditioning program has been so successful in Member States, the conditioning of national inventories of radium sources is almost completed. The emphasis is now shifting to the conditioning of other high activity and long lived sources. Increased emphasis will be placed on training specialists in Member States in order to build national capacities to manage their disused sealed radioactive sources while maintaining direct assistance, when requested, in the conditioning of disused sources. The following slideshow illustrate this work:
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| Radium slideshow |
Disused Source Recovery
This program provides direct assistance to member states for the movement and conditioning of high activity sources. The assistance can consist of the movement of sources or devices into a secure storage facility, the consolidation of sources into a long term storage container, the repatriation of the sources to the country of origin, or assistance in recovering orphan sources detected in unsecured locations. To assist the program˙s missions, tools have been developed for source conditioning high activity sources on site using a mobile hot cell and long-term storage shield – LTSS. These tools work very effectively as shown in recent deployments in Member States. The following slideshows illustrate this work:
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| mobile hot cell slideshow | Teletheraphy slideshow |
Building Capacity in Member States to Manage Disused Sealed Radioactive Sources: This program component concentrates on providing assistance to Member States to help upgrade the appropriate sealed sources processing capacity in the country. A generic design for source conditioning/storage facilities exists and can be modified according to the specific technical status and requirements of the Member State. The program also concentrates on training Member States in the fundamentals of sealed source handling and providing them with the technical procedures, know-how and the software that allows them to keep track of their sources. Under this program a number of activities to help other stakeholders to identify and properly deal with such sources are being carried out. Examples of these are the information that is available to customs authorities, border controls, and scrap yards to help identify orphaned sources. See IAEA Nuclear Security Series No. 5, Identification of Radioactive Sources and Devices.
Borehole disposal of Sealed Radioactive Sources (BOSS).
A perspective issue that is being currently evaluated is the assessment of potential disposal options for disused radioactive sources, paying particular attention to the borehole technology. The most benefit of this technology is seen in safe and secure disposal of disused sealed sources, but it may be recommended to any country without any other disposal option that generates small volume of radioactive waste. Taking into consideration high radioactivity and content of long lived radionuclides typical for certain types of sealed sources, some Member States consider boreholes as an additional disposal facility co-located to a near surface repository. The technology is being transmitted with TC support to a number of Member States from several regions, including Africa, South America and Asia. Click here for additional details.