Waste certification at the Y-12 Plant

The ability to certify wastes at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant for the purposes of storage or disposal is being enhanced to comply with evolving regulatory requirements for existing facilities, and proposed certification strategies for future waste disposal facilities as described in the Low Level Waste Disposal Development and Demonstration Program strategy. The Y-12 program consists of four levels of characterization and certification including solids/liquids, determination, hazard verification, general characterization, and quantification of concentrations of radioisotopes. In order to enhance overall certification capabilities at the plant several improvements to the existing program are in progress or scheduled. These include the construction of a new facility with improved instrumentation for monitoring radioisotope concentrations in bulk (dumpster) quantities, as well as improvements to an existing facility to lower its detection limit for depleted uranium contamination. Also included is the acquisition of waste curie monitors using passive plastic scintillation detectors to monitor small waste containers, and a nuclear material monitor which utilizes thermal-neutron and fast-neutron interrogation to determine radioisotope content