Dose to curie determination for containers with measurable Cs-137
摘要
The Next Generation Retrieval (NGR) project will retrieve suspect transuranic (TRU) waste containers from Trenches 17 and 27 in the 218-E-12B (12B) burial ground. The trenches were in operation from May 1970 through October 1972. A portion of the retrieved containers that will require shipment to and acceptance at a treatment, storage, and disposal (TSD) facility and the containers will be either remote-handled (RH) and/or contact-handled (CH). The method discussed in this document will be used for the RH and some of the CH containers to determine the radionuclide inventory. Waste disposition (shipment and TSD acceptance) requires that the radioactive content be characterized for each container. Source-term estimates using high resolution, shielded, gamma-ray scan assay techniques cannot be performed on a number of RH and other containers with high dose rates from {sup 137}Cs-{sup 137m}Ba. This document provides the method to quantify the radioactive inventory of fission product gamma emitters within the containers based on the surface dose rate measurements taken in the field with hand-held survey instruments.