Year
1998
Abstract
Nuclear waste assay is becoming one of the most important issues in the fields of safeguards and waste management and disposal. Waste drums can only be assayed by non-destructive assay techniques (NDA) prior to being disposed of, or to be accounted by safeguards inspectorates. Measurement problems are linked to the low quantities of Special Nuclear Material present and to the absence of well characterised, highly certified reference materials, representative of the nuclear waste population currently produced in European Union plants. In this context the ESARDA Non Destructive Assay working group launched and is leading a project sponsored by the European Commission, which consists in manufacturing 16 reference waste drums. The project is executed in cooperation between the Joint Research Center - Institute for Reference Materials and Management (IRMM ), Commissariat a L’Energie Atomique (CEA)-Cadarache and British Nuclear Fuel plc (BNFL)-Sellafield, which have prepared the set of certified plutonium containing radwaste barrels. The waste drums will be available in Autumn 1998 to the nuclear community. They will be used as calibration standards for waste characterisation in different waste handling installations and for intercomparisons between different facilities, contributing thus to a harmonisation of radwaste measurements in Europe. The results of such exercises can not only offer the possibility to intercompare different measurement installations, but also define both the present standard and the future target of waste measurement quality in Europe.