Speaker
Description
Waste Technology Development Centre (WasTeC) of the Malaysian Nuclear Agency has been managing various forms of radioactive wastes since 1984. Among liquid wastes managed at the centre, the type that is most challenging is perhaps the mixed organic liquid waste. This kind of wastes consist of a multitude of scintillation liquids, mineral processing solvents, and medical radiotherapy fluids. The hazardous-radioactive combination of this waste type requires both regulations to be fulfilled when it comes to disposal. Firstly, the radioactivity of the waste has to be reduced to safe levels by means of reprocessing, radionuclide extraction or simply decay storage before it can be disposed according to hazardous waste disposal procedures. However, considerations on the disposal economics makes only decay storage a viable option for the waste. All in all, there were about 3100 2.5 -litre bottles of mixed organic waste of various types. After being kept for over 30 years, signs of container degradation were obvious. This possessed a threat to the overall safety of the workplace should the waste containers fail. Furthermore, long term storage results in involuntary loss and deterioration of records. Considering the urgency of the matter and limited number of available records, a rapid characterization protocol was developed to separate the still-radioactive and decayed legacy organic wastes prior to disposal. The establishment of a correlation between two methods for this particular case; the determination of activity concentration using Geiger-Mueller Ludlum 185-8 and the dose rate using ThermoScientific RadEye B20-ER was attempted. Among 3100 bottles of waste, 55 bottles were randomly selected for the study. The established correlation was used to develop a characterization and segregation protocol for the waste disposal. The protocol was also backed by the decay information of radionuclides (where available) and observations of the would-be physical attributes of the waste. The protocol successfully segregated the radioactive from the decayed organic waste whereby only less than 100 bottles from the estimated 3100 bottles of waste were determined to be of higher activity and continued to be kept.
| Speaker's title | Mr |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | Agensi Nuklear Malaysia |
