Shallow land burial in vadose zone sediment at the Hanford Site in Washington is being considered for the disposal of Category 3 low-level waste. A series of column experiments were conducted to evaluate and model the performance of the soil surrounding the trench encasement material for iodine-129 and technetium-99 by...
In the last decade regulatory bodies have begun to implement standards to protect populations of non-human biota (NHB) from the consequences of radiation exposure. This is a departure from previous regulatory frameworks which were concerned only with protecting man. The implementation of these new standards has started an ongoing discussion...
Concentration ratios are used to determine the transfer of nuclides from soil to biota to fauna. Some nuclides have limited associated data though, this has not prevented predictions from being performed at sites without associated data. These ratios are site specific and are not fully applicable when applied to other...
The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) has modeled twelve reference animal and plant (RAP) species using simple geometric shapes in Monte–Carlo (MCNP) based simulations. The focus has now shifted to creating voxel phantoms of each RAP to advance the understanding of radiation interactions in nonhuman biota. The work contained...
Two methods of radiation dose assessment were evaluated for the Cs-137 in soil ⇒ leafy vegetable ⇒ human consumption exposure pathway at three fictitious contaminated sites in California, Colorado, and Florida. An annual dose equation was developed and per USEPA risk assessment guidelines, traditional, single point annual dose estimates were...
The Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state was initially created
during World War II for the production of plutonium to be used in atomic bombs. A
perceived need for a large increase in the number of nuclear weapons spurred
expansions in production facilities at Hanford through the 1960's, and production...
The goal of the project was to develop a functional prototype of an environmental risk assessment parameter database on the World-Wide Web. The ability to develop a consolidated environmental database has become possible due to the phenomenal growth of the Internet and the World-Wide Web over the past few years....
Efforts are continually being made in remediation surveys to reduce the time and manpower required to perform work while maintaining the ability to detect low levels of contamination. To this end, organizations are utilizing portable instrumentation in conjunction with global positioning systems (GPS). This combination of technologies allows a surveyor...