Re: Disposal of Ra into the Sea

[Franz Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 02:53 03.02.1999 -0600, you wrote:
>Greetings to all,
>I am a nuclear engineer (Ph.D. candidate) who is currently working as a
>Health Physicist, Assistant Radiation Safety Officer at the American
>University of Beirut (Lebanon).  We are currently negotiating with an
>American company to properly dispose of our old radium needles/tubes that
>have total activity of around 250 mg.  One of our certified medical
>physicists proposed a method to dispose of the radium needles/tubes into
>the sea.  Moreover, he described his method as placing the tubes/needles in
>an acid container and then dropping the resulting liquid into the sea.
>Please advice on the current U.S. or international regulations that address
>this issue.  Is such disposal forbidden?  Please also advice on the
>environmental impact of such a behavior.  I would appreciate frank answers.


I think that the answer mostly depends on the place where the dumping or
spilling is intended. If it is in Lebanon waters it might be subject to the
Lebanon regulations and also to international treaties, which forbid (?)
sea dumping of radioactive waste and whether Lebanon has adopted these
international regulations or recommendations. 

Also I think to remember that the IAEA has carried out or still carries out
a program to recover used radium sources from hospitals. Answers to both
the question of this recovery program and international conventions about
sea dumping might be available from the IAEA. The homepage is
http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom.

I think that the practice of dissolving the radium needles in acid and
pour the liquid into the sea would be absolute unacceptable in Europe or
the USA.

Good luck!

Franz


Franz Schoenhofer
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
Tel.: +43-1-495 53 08
Fax.: same number
mobile phone: +43-664-338 0 333
e-mail: schoenho@via.at

Office:
Hofrat Dr. Franz Schönhofer
Federal Institute for Food Control and Research
Department of Radiochemistry
Kinderspitalg. 15
A-1095 Vienna
Austria
Tel.: +43-1-40 490 27820
e-mail: schoenhofer@baluf.via.at
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