ICEM11 Final Program 9.7.11pm_ICEM07 Final Program ... - Events

Session 36 Abstracts
On the basis of the different inventories of industrial sites where radium may have been held or used, and notably the inventory
updated by the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire
IRSN) in 2007 at the request of the French Nuclear Safety Authority (Autorité de sûreté nucléaire ASN), French State services
have potentially identified 134 sites that hosted radium-related activities in France. The radiological status of those sites is either
unknown or very partially…
2) ANDRA’S REMEDIATION MISSIONS (w/oP-59210)
Patrick Poiret, Eric Lanes, Andra (France)
For many years now, the French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency (Agence nationale pour la gestion des
déchets radioactifs Andra) has been cleaning up several sites contaminated with radioactivity, bearing in mind that all such remediation
missions share the unique peculiarity of being performed entirely outside the nuclear-power-generation field.
Thanks to the 2006 Planning Act and the new corporate circular in the legal field, to the implementation of the CNAR for
organisational purposes, to the public technical subsidy for dedicated storage facilities and the disposal facility for VLL waste (Centre
TFA) from a financial standpoint, Andras new structure is now in place to ensure a proactive approach to manage the environmental
liabilities arising from the sites polluted by radioactive materials, which, although scarce in number, each confront us with
a specific challenge.
3) URANIUM MILL TAILINGS REMEDIATION IN THE USA. A HISTORY AND LESSONS LEARNED (w/oP-59407)
Steve Rima, AMEC (USA)
Since the 1940s uranium ores have been processed at various locations in the United States to extract and produce uranium and
other concentrated materials, first for government (weapons) research and production, and then for nuclear power production. The
tailings residue from the uranium milling process contained radioactive (primarily Ra-226) and hazardous chemicals. Large volumes
of tailings were produced during the milling process. In the early history of this process the tailings were not recognized as
hazardous and were released to the general public for a wide variety of uses, resulting in significant spread of contamination in the
vicinity of many operating mills.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s laws were enacted at the state and federal level to begin to deal with the legacy of this contamination.
Over the course of the next several decades various regulatory agencies were responsible for remediating these sites.
Different approaches were used, different end points and definitions of clean were used, and very large sums of public funding were
spent on remediating these sites. Rarely was the cost commensurate with the risk reduction obtained through remediation.
This paper will present an overview of the history of the uranium mill tailings regulatory and remediation program in the United
States, the cost of the program compared to risk reduction, successes and failures, and important lessons learned that should be
applied to future efforts in this area.
4) REMEDIATION OF CANADA’S HISTORIC HAUL ROUTE FOR RADIUM AND
URANIUM ORES: THE NORTHERN TRANSPORTATION ROUTE (wP-59303)
Robert Brian Geddes, Chris Wenzel, AMEC; Michael Owen,
Mark J. Gardiner, AECL; Julie Brown, Natural Resources Canada’s (Canada)
Established in the 1930s, the Northern Transportation Route (NTR) served to transport pitchblende ore 2,200km from the Port
Radium Mine in Canadas Northwest Territories to Fort McMurray in Alberta. From there, the ore was shipped 3,000km by rail to
the town of Port Hope, Ontario where it was refined for its radium content and used for medical purposes. Later, refinement
focussed on uranium content.
The corridor of lakes, rivers, portages and roads that made up the NTR included a number of transfer points, where ore was
unloaded and transferred to other barges or trucks. Ore was occasionally spilled during these transfer operations and, in some cases,
subsequently distributed over larger areas as properties were re-developed or modified. In addition, relatively small volumes of ore
were sometimes transported by air to the south.
Since 1992, the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office (LLRWMO) has conducted surveys to identify and characterize
spill sites along the NTR where soils exhibit elevated concentrations of uranium, radium and/or arsenic. In addition to significant
areas of impact in Fort McMurray, contamination along the NTR was centred in the Sahtu region near Great Bear Lake and
along the southern part of the Slave River. Early radiological investigations found…
SESSION 37 — YOUNG GENERATION NETWORK (YGN) AND
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS (5.16)
1) THE REESTABLISHMENT OF RADIOCHEMISTRY ACADEMIC
PROGRAMS IN THE UNITED STATES (w/oP-59025)
Craig Williamson, South Carolina Universities Research and Education Foundation (USA)
Despite its importance in national security, medicine, energy, and in waste management radiochemistry education in the United
States has gone through two lost decades. In the 1970s ten to fifteen universities were granting between thirty (30) and forty (40)
doctoral degrees a year. By the 1980s those numbers had declined to twenty (20) and thirty (30) a year, by the 1990s the numbers
had again decreased to below fifteen (15) Ph.D.s a year. In the year 2000, the data shows that only 5 Ph.D.s in radiochemistry were
awarded. The causes for this decline is directly attributed to the lack of federal support for an academic discipline that for the most
part depends on federal funding.
In 2011, it is expected that over thirty (30) doctoral degrees in radiochemistry will be conferred. The turn around in radiochemistry
education in the United States can be directly attributed to the support provided by the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense
and Homeland Security. In addition, support has come from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and from the National
Nuclear Security Administration. The form of this support has been extensive from proposed undergraduate research programs,
scholarships, graduate fellowships, junior faculty awards, curriculum awards, and grants…
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