Port Hope Area Initiative: Information Management for A Very Large Radiation Survey - 19567

The Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) represents the Government of Canada's commitment to the cleanup and safe, local, long-term management of historic low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) in two Southern Ontario municipalities - Port Hope. The PHAI is based on community-recommended solutions for the cleanup and safe long-term management of approximately 1.7 million cubic meters of LLRW. It is currently one of Canada's largest environmental remediation projects at a cost of over one billion dollars. The PHAI is being implemented by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) on behalf of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, a federal Crown corporation. The waste is the result of radium and uranium processing in Port Hope by the former federal crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear Limited between 1933 and 1988. The waste has been distributed in the Municipality of Port Hope through placement of contaminated materials (e.g. fill), reuse of contaminated objects (e.g. tailings use in concrete, steel posts, structural wood) and air-borne deposition. Signature contaminants of potential concern (COPCs) are Ra-226, Th-230, uranium and arsenic; however, there are an additional 17 COPCs that also need to be considered. A very large amount of information has been collected during the survey and effectively managing and analyzing this information is critical to the success for the property owners, CNL's implementation of the PHAI, and Arcadis. Data collected during the survey includes information pertaining to long-term interior radon gas measurements, interior gamma radiation surveys, contaminated objects and surfaces, exterior gamma radiation and subsurface investigations. exterior gamma radiation surveys. The information management (IM) is structured with SharePoint as a focal point supported by an EQuIS database, mobile data collection and GIS support. The IM process for this project is being advanced using recent software developments to assist with internal activities (e.g. QA) and interactions with CNL including notifications and scheduling and status of property completion. Different applications have been developed to help automate, visualize, actively track, and QA different processes using recent software developments by Microsoft. We have used SharePoint to organize and track our data. Power BI has been used to actively track and visualize our data from Interior gamma surveying to exterior drilling. The creation of dynamic/advanced visualizations in Power BI gathers data daily from our multiple sources and analyzes it for anomalous data and trends. Microsoft Flow syncs with Power BI and has been implemented to automate many processes including the QA of surveys and soil results for identification of LLRW. To tie everything together, our GIS and EQuIS systems are our primary data compilation source that makes our advanced analytics/visualization and automation/tracking our data possible. Specific examples will be discussed, as will challenges encountered during the continuing development of the IM system. The incorporation of software advancements to the existing IM system for Port Hope characterization has improved the quality of the surveys, the tracking of completion, meeting schedule requirements and providing the required data for tracking, report preparation and supporting remediation of contamination on the properties. (authors)