Over a two week period in October and November, Quintessa provided a training course on the disposal of disused sealed radioactive sources (DSRS) to seven participants from the Bulgarian State Enterprise Radioactive Waste (SERAW) remotely, via video conference. SERAW is responsible for the safe management of radioactive waste, including DSRS, generated by nuclear power and other nuclear applications.
The course comprised lectures on the nature of DSRS, their characterisation and categorisation, their conditioning and management, and the development of safety cases and safety assessments for their disposal. It was noted that some short-lived and lower-activity DSRSs may be disposed in near surface disposal facilities, but others require greater degrees of isolation and containment provided by borehole disposal or geological disposal. Practical examples of the derivation of waste acceptance criteria for DSRS and the retrieval of DSRS from historic storage facilities were discussed.
Participants undertook a series of practical examples using hypothetical and actual DSRS inventories during the two weeks. These were used to illustrate the application of the grade approach described in TECDOC-1928, produced by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to help determine appropriate disposal options. This involved the use of the BDC Scoping Tool developed by Quintessa for the IAEA and the application of AMBER to the borehole disposal of DSRS.