Radiation Protection for the Radioactive Waste Management in Cuba

The Centre for Radiation Protection and Hygiene is the organization responsible for the management of radioactive waste in Cuba, and carries out the collection, transport, treatment, conditioning and storage of radioactive waste and disused radioactive sources generated from nuclear applications. Adequate infrastructure is in place for this purpose, including a Waste Treatment and Conditioning Plant and a Storage Facility. A License from the Regulatory Body is required for the operation of facilities and for waste management activities. The safety case has been developed to demonstrate the safety of the facilities and the practice and to support license application. According to national regulations, the safety case should include operational and safety procedures, radiation protection program, safety analysis, among others The radiation protection program includes the arrangements aimed at providing adequate consideration of radiation protection measures during the work with radioactive materials and inside the facilities, to guarantee the radiation protection of the operators and to avoid the dispersion of radioactive materials to the environment. The radiation protection program and its implementation are described in the paper, as well as, the elements of facility design and operations that influence into safety. The safety analysis includes the estimation of expected doses during normal operations and in radiological emergency situations and the risk evaluation. The risk matrix methodology is used for the safety analysis. It is a tool to establish risk management priorities based on a combined analysis of the probability of occurrence of an undesirable event and its consequences. This method has been widely applied in high-risk industries and more recently to radioactive facilities such as radiotherapy and industrial radiography practices. The application of risk matrix approach for radioactive waste management is described in this paper. It consists of the identification of possible initiating events of accidental sequences, the description of radiological consequences and their classification in levels of risk, and the safety barriers to prevent accidents or to mitigate their consequences. Twenty eight initiating events were identified for all the stages of radioactive waste management. As a result of applying the risk matrix methodology it was obtained that none of identified accidental sequences had neither high nor very high risk, 13 have medium risk, while the rest have low risk. A second analysis was not necessary and the practice was considered safe The safety case was evaluated by the Regulatory Body and approved. The License was granted for a 5 year period. (author)