Technologists from Cuba’s Centre for Radiation Protection and Hygiene (CPHR) successfully removed 52 disused sealed radioactive sources from the country’s only food irradiation plant on 11 and 12 January, transferring them to the waste management facility for safe and secure storage. Organized for the first time under the supervision of Cuba’s nuclear regulatory authority, this operation demonstrated the experience and skills acquired by CPHR staff following IAEA capacity building support in this area over many years.
“This achievement represents the latest milestone in the country’s efforts to re-establish its discontinued food irradiation services,” said Raquel Scamilla Andreo Aledo, IAEA Programme Management Officer for Cuba. “These efforts further demonstrate Cuban efforts to promote the safe and secure implementation of radiation applications for the benefit of the economy.”
Regaining capacities, resuming operations
In 1987, with IAEA support, Cuba's Food Irradiation Plant (PIA), the first and only facility of its kind in the country, was put into operation at the Food Industry Research Institute (IIIA) in Havana with the aim of improving food quality, reducing spoilage and destroying bacteria through food irradiation.
A decade later, however, the PIA discontinued its irradiation services due in part to the decreasing radioactivity of their sealed sources and the need for technological improvements at the facility. In 2005, Cuba’s Nuclear Energy and Advanced Technologies Agency (AENTA) developed a strategy to re-develop the country's irradiation capacities. The strategy was supported by an IAEA technical cooperation (TC) project[1] designed to promote and encourage radiation services in important sectors of the country's economy.
Following expert missions, training courses and the provision of equipment through the TC programme, in February 2019 IAEA experts and Cuban specialists installed new cobalt-60 radioactive sources at PIA, enabling the facility to reopen its doors and make its services available after a near 25-year hiatus.
To finalize the installation of the new sources, their low-activity predecessors had to be removed. However, without a suitable container available for the safe and secure transport and storage of the disused radioactive sources, they could not be transferred to Cuba’s radioactive waste storage facility and consequently were deposited into a reserve pit, located in the same facility of the irradiator. These activities were carried out with the assistance of IAEA experts.
