Modernization of liquid and solid radwaste management technologies at Production Association Electrochemical Plant

The nuclear materials processing technology used at Electrochemical plant allows deep recovery of uranium from uranium-containing solutions, with the outgoing waste solutions containing 1-2 mg/dm3 of uranium. During the process of waste solution neutralization with lime milk uranium compounds concentrate in solid phase of the pulp and stay in it after pulp separation into solid and liquid phases. In liquid phase specific activity is within 0.8-1.2 Bq/m3, which is clearly below interference level for uranium isotope content in drinking water. In order to minimise the volume of solid radioactive wastes coming into storage, a decision was made to compress the wastes directly in 200-litre drums used for storage with special compacting machine. It is shown, that the best fitting solution to the complicated problem of measuring specific activity of uranium isotopes contained in solid radioactive wastes with low and non-uniform density is the ISOCS γ-spectrometry system offered by Canberra, which consists of a coaxial high pure germanium-detector that boast effectiveness of at least 40%, and a rotating weighting platform