Re: Disposal of Ra into the Sea

[Steve Cima <cima@bellsouth.net>]

Sorry about the format of the first reply, try this:

Ocean disposal is a controversial alternative.  The IAEA has a program to
assist countries in managing their old radium sources.  I would encourage you
to contact them to see if they can help.

I found  the following article on the Internet at:

http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/updates/radsource.html.

Although the long-term disposal issue is unresolved it appears there is
international agreement that these sources can be managed without resorting to
ocean disposal.

Safe storage of radiation sources

An IAEA-supported team of experts is working in South America to help countries
safely manage radiation sources, in this case radium. Specifically, experts are
carrying out technical activities to condition radium sources for safe storage.
With financial support from the United States, the first radium conditioning
operation has been carried out in Uruguay by an IAEA-supported expert team from
Brazil. In total, 59 GBq (1586 mg) of radium was conditioned in 31 stainless
steel capsules emplaced in lead shields and finally placed in four specially
prepared 200 liter drums for safe interim storage. In addition to its support
of expert teams to condition radium sources, the IAEA is also providing
detailed technical information on the conditioning operations and expert advice
to national conditioning teams.

 Radium sources have been used for almost 100 years, primarily for cancer
treatment. Since the sources have unfavorable characteristics, they have been
replaced with other radiation sources and now almost all countries have stopped
their use. The IAEA has estimated that there are about 30,000 spent radium
sources which need to be taken care of, many of those in developing Member
States. Due to the long half-life of radium, the sources eventually need to be
disposed of in deep geological repositories, which seem not to be available for
many years to come.
 For many years, the IAEA has been giving advice on how conditioning of spent
radium sources for storage can be done, with the view of their eventual
disposal. However, it is recognized that many countries do not have the
technical infrastructure needed to ensure that the conditioning operation can
be done in a proper way. To accelerate the progress, the IAEA is implementing a
new approach: hands-on assistance to those developing Member States which have
terminated their use of radium sources. In this approach, all identified spent
radium sources in a country will be collected and treated in one single
campaign by an expert team, thereby solving the immediate national problem with
spent radium sources.

 The radium conditioning concept (which is described in IAEA-TECDOC-886) is
based on enclosing and sealing the radium sources in stainless steel capsules
which are placed in a shielded storage container. This ensures safety of the
sources for a storage period of at least 40 years. If necessary, the capsules
can be easily and safely retrieved for further conditioning prior to disposal
in deep geological repositories.

Good Luck!

Steve Cima
University of Florida
cima@bellsouth.net




Malek Chatila 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.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Malek Chatila
> American University of Beirut
> Email: mc02@aub.edu.lb
> Fax: 011-961-749-198
> Phone: 011-961-749-199
>
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