Re: Re[2]: MDA of radionuclides in soil (Regulatory Issues)???

["Michael P. Grissom" <mikeg@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

To be fair to the ****** facility (whatever it may be), many 
DOE facilities, if not all, were required to develop very 
low detection methods to ensure "no rad added" in response to 
the shipping moratorium that was imposed in 1991.  For those 
not aware, a shipment of waste from the Oak Ridge area was 
found to have radioactivity in it even though it was sent as 
"non-radioactive" to a disposal site.  As usual, everyone in 
the DOE community had to deal with the "fallout"!

As for "tribal knowledge", I think it would be more appropriate
to call it "consultant driven prescriptiveness"!  (Personal
opinion only, not a DOE or lab assessment!)

An interesting spin-off of the moratorium was that many DOE
facilities developed somewhat different criteria, presumably
due to the nature of their potential waste streams and
available counting equipment.

Ciao,

MikeG.

At 08:22 AM 2/26/96 -0600, you wrote:
>     
>For DOE sites in the state of ****, MDA's do not appear to 
>be steeped in logic or to have technical merit.  It seems 
>to be based on "tribal knowledge", which prevails to this day.
>
>For example, at the ****** facility, the MDA for total uranium 
>for the facility monitoring program, is 0.1 pCi/gr (or liter).  
>...
>
>After a year of "banging my head against a concrete wall", I 
>have decided to accept these tremendouly low levels and continue 
>to do my job until some one greater and better decides to 
>standardize or rationalize instument MDA's for environmental 
>monitoring programs.

Please help in this process if you can!

>P.S.  I agree with Jim Barnes as to cringing at a 5 billion 
>second count to detect a fractional pCi/gr (l) of anything.

Jim has a lot of experience in "rad or non-rad added" soil, it 
pays to listen to him!
-----------------------
Michael P. Grissom
mikeg@slac.stanford.edu
Phone:  (415) 926-2346
Fax:    (415) 926-3030