Management of recovered spent gamma and neutron sources in the ATALANTE facility

The CEA, which supplies radioactive sources both within and outside the CEA Group, is responsible for organizing and carrying out the retrieval of the sources at the end of their service lives. Since 1993, the ATALANTE facility has recovered all the gamma (activities > 11.1 Gbq) and neutron sources. The information necessary to organize the source retrieval in compliance with very stringent transport regulations is collected initially; the sources are then kept in interim storage prior to destruction according to the kind of source and the actinides they contain. Since 2002, ATALANTE facility has the capacity for opening 5 to 10 sources a day. The powder containing actinides is collected and reprocessed to recover the material; the source containers are disposed of as a A type (low-level) waste