One of Quintessa’s placement students, Jennifer Wilson, has recently participated in a week-long IAEA workshop on ‘Techniques and Technologies for characterising radioactively contaminated land’ held at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in the UK.
Contaminated sites are locations where substances occur at concentrations that may pose a risk to human health and/or the environment. The ability to characterise a site prior to, during, and following any site works is key to ensuring its appropriate remediation and reuse. Characterisation involves multi-disciplinary activities which require systematic planning and a team with a range of expertise and technical backgrounds.
The workshop provided an overview of the most important technical details for planning and implementing the characterisation of radioactively contaminated land. Topics covered creating and using conceptual site models, systematic planning, non-intrusive and intrusive site investigation, data assessment, geostatistics and visualisation.