Disposal of short-lived radionuclide wastes in sanitary landfills

The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority has sponsored an analysis of the use of permitted sanitary landfills for the disposal of wastes containing only low concentrations of radionuclides with half-lives less than 300 days. Multipathway risk assessments have been performed giving limits on concentrations and total curies annually disposed for 55 short-lived radionuclides. Disposal and such wastes in a sanitary landfill could affect more than one-third of the LLW from hospitals, universities, and industries. In the analysis, annual doses to the most exposed individual and health impacts to a collective population are calculated for two reference situations including a large metropolitan area with many waste generators and a small suburban area with only a few generators. Conservative assumptions are used in formulating the scenarios for analysis