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- Title
NON-DESTRUCTIVE METHOD OF CHARACTERISATION OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE CONTAINERS USING GAMMA SPECTROSCOPY AND MONTE CARLO TECHNIQUES.
- Authors
Ridikas, D.; Feray, S.; Cometto, M.; Damoy, F.
- Abstract
During the decommissioning of the SATURNE accelerator at CEA Saclay (France), a number of concrete containers with radioactive materials of low or very low activity had to be characterised before their final storage. In this paper, a non-destructive approach combining gamma ray spectroscopy and Monte Carlo simulations is used in order to characterise massive concrete blocks containing some radioactive waste. The limits and uncertainties of the proposed method are quantified for the source term activity estimates using 137Cs as a tracer element. A series of activity measurements with a few representative waste containers were performed before and after destruction. It has been found that neither was the distribution of radioactive materials homogeneous nor was its density unique, and this became the major source of systematic errors in this study. Nevertheless, we conclude that by combining gamma ray spectroscopy and full scale Monte Carlo simulations one can estimate the source term activity for some tracer elements such as 134Cs, 137Cs, 60Co, etc. The uncertainty of this estimation should not be bigger than a factor of 2-3.
- Subjects
PARTICLE accelerators; RADIOACTIVE substances; GAMMA rays; IONIZING radiation; MONTE Carlo method; ELECTROMAGNETIC waves
- Publication
Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 2005, Vol 115, Issue 1-4, p113
- ISSN
0144-8420
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/rpd/nci253