Management of disused radium sources in Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper describes the radium sources conditioning operation carried out in Latin American and the Caribbean by a team of the Brazilian federal research institute CDTN, as part of an International Atomic Energy Agency.s hands-on assistance project to safely condition disused sources in developing countries. This initiative was spawned by the perceived hazard associated with the use of radium sources, caused mainly by the high likelihood that these sources leak during their use due to the accumulation of the radon gas in their interior. The conditions under which these sources are often stored in the target countries, without proper documentation, mixed with different radiation sources and under precarious conditions, urged the Agency to start this ten-year program at the end of 1996. The conditioning process starts with a pre-mission to the candidate country, when a place is selected for the forthcoming operation, improvements in the local available infrastructure are suggested and the most complete information available about the country.s source inventory is collected. The operation consists of transferring the sources from their original shields to sturdy multi-barrier packages, which are put under the control of the local nuclear authority. As part of the quality assurance program applied to this project, the relevant information about the conditioned inventory is recorded and made available to the host country, to the IAEA and to the conditioning team. (author)