Certifying the Performance of Fixative Technologies Under Impact Stress for D and D Activities - 21158

Department of Energy (DOE) facilities undergoing decontamination and decommissioning (D and D) activities struggle with safety concerns of residual radioactive contamination leftover after gross decontamination efforts have concluded. Outdated regulations, such as the DOE-HDBK-3010, provide some direction on appropriate factors for dealing with the residual contamination. However, there is no standardized metric in place that quantifies the performance of these technologies such as incombustible fixative platforms that immobilize the contamination in a solid polymer material under normal operating conditions or when exposed to stressors, as outlined in the DOE-HDBK-3010 and Basis of Interim Operation documents. The primary objective of this research is to provide the data necessary to properly characterize the effects of implementing fixative technologies on mitigating the release of contamination. In addition, this effort has been used to identify and establish peer-reviewed, uniform testing protocols to quantify operational parameters of fixating platforms and properly credit such systems under a variety of stressors (e.g. thermal, impact, etc.). The established protocols will be provided to the ASTM International E10.03 Subcommittee on Radiological Protection for Decontamination and Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities and Components for the potential of formal standardization. An initial experimental design for impact stressors has been developed to address the certification of fixatives through an extensive research of similar techniques and adopting existing standardized test methods. Throughout the numerous DOE's nuclear facilities, there are many different types of substrates that the fixatives may be applied to. However, these preliminary experiments only consider non-porous substrates, specifically 304-stainless steel coupons. All testing is performed on coupons without a fixative to create a baseline of release quantities and with popular fixatives used in the nuclear sector. In developing these test methods, several key components of the experimental methodology have been identified as essential in empirically certifying fixative technologies. A surrogate contaminate with a unique signature is utilized with a standardized contamination process of the coupons that is quantifiable and replicable for direct fixative comparisons. Released contamination is collected through the use of an air sampler with filters and sampling wipes and includes airborne and resettled contaminant particles. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is used for the final analysis to reveal the amount of released contamination. This research directly supports DOE complex-wide concerns in terms of final disposition of nuclear facilities and the considerations made during their time between ceasing facility operation and final disposition. The result of this effort aims to provide a roadmap and logical decision flow to better facilitate qualified fixative technologies into D and D activities required to mitigate risk and achieve the desired facility end state. (authors)