Waste Technology Section
Source Recovery
IAEA Assistance
The IAEA provides assistance to help Member States manage their stock of disused/spent sealed sources. The assistance can be in the form of:
- Provision of technical information, procedures and design drawing for the required tools and equipment according to the sealed sources in question;
- Provision of some equipment needed for source conditioning (e.g. leak test equipment, special welding equipment for sealed sources, etc.);
- Training of national experts to form a team that can manage sealed radioactive sources;
- Development of technical procedures for handling, recovering and conditioning of sealed sources that are part of large equipment and instruments; and
- Provision of direct assistance, when the infrastructure does not allow for a local team to conduct such work. A mobile kit is used in such a case.
Requirements for Assistance
Member States that require any of the assistance listed above can write through official channels to the project manager of the Interregional Project INT/4/131 at the Technical Cooperation Department or the technical officer of the project at the Nuclear Energy Department, Waste Technology Section. The request should include sufficient information on the sources involved and the extent of assistance requested. The sources to be conditioned must have been taken out of service and declared as disused/spent sources.
A counterpart should be identified through whom all communications and arrangements will be arranged. If a national team is expected to carry out the operation, Curriculum Vitae of the team members are required. A team for source conditioning consists of a team leader experienced in waste management and sealed source conditioning, a radiation protection officer with reasonable experience in the field, a certified welder and a number of general workers that have experience in working with radioactive materials. Depending on the operational complexity the number of the team members will vary from three to six. If the sources are within a specific equipment other experts, familiar with that equipment may also be required.
Technical procedures for handling, recovering and conditioning of sources would be required. Depending on the source status, physical and chemical conditions other expertise may also be required. If in doubt identification of the technical expertise for the operation.
A number of conditioning operations are currently planned in Latin America,
Africa, South East Asia and Eastern Europe. 
Sources that no longer have a special form certificate or a licensed transport
container can neither be transported in an economical fashion, nor can they be
stored in their original shields due to environmental degradation of the
source. In developing countries there is no possibility to condition such
sources economically and safely. The IAEA subprogram currently involves
projects
to develop the infrastructure required to allow the handling and conditioning
of high activity sources, long lived sources in large size equipment and
neutron sources of various sizes and strength. Technical procedures for
conditioning such sources are also being developed in cooperation with a number
of Member States.
Over
50 conditioning operations have been conducted in about 45 Member States. Over
10,000 individual sources have been conditioned. While most of them were radium
sources, other types of sources are becoming more and more common. Technical
procedures to condition various types of sources have been developed and can be
shared with Member States interested in conducting source conditioning
operations. 
A number of equipment and tools that allow handling sources (leak testing equipment, semi automatic remote welding, biological shields, storage shields, special manipulators, etc.) have been designed and manufactured through the IAEA subprogram.
A form for request of the IAEA assistance is under preparation. As soon as it is finalized, it will be placed on this page.