Spent sealed radium sources conditioning in Latin America

The management of spent sealed sources is considered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) one of the greatest challenges faced by nuclear authorities today, especially in developing countries. One of the Agencyʹs initiatives to tackle this problem is the “Spent Radium Sources Conditioning Project”, a worldwide project relying on the regional co-operation between countries. A team from the Brazilian nuclear research institute Centro de Desenvolvimento da Tecnologia Nuclear (CDTN) was chosen as the expert team to carry out the operations in Latin America; since December 1996 radium sources have been safely conditioned in Uruguay, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador and Paraguay. A Quality Assurance Program was established, encompassing the qualification of the capsule welding process, written operational procedures referring to all major steps of the operation, calibration of monitors and information retrievability. A 200L carbon steel drum-based packaging concept was used to condition the sources, its cavity being designed to receive the lead shield device containing stainless steel capsules with the radium sources. As a result of these operations, a total amount of 2897 mg (approx. 107 GBq) of needles, tubes, medical applicators, standard sources for calibration, lightning rods, secondary wastes (generated during the operations) and contaminated objects were stored in proper conditions and are now under control of the nuclear authorities of the visited countries.