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Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Tank waste operations resume at Idaho’s IWTU
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced yesterday that waste processing operations have resumed at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory Site. The resumption of operations follows the completion of two maintenance campaigns at the radioactive liquid waste treatment facility.
Bobby E. Leonard
Nuclear Technology | Volume 152 | Number 3 | December 2005 | Pages 339-353
Technical Paper | Decontamination/Decommissioning | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3681
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Interior surface deposition effects of vaporized radioactive aerosols are important in understanding their behavior in accident conditions such as the Japanese nuclear laboratory accident in 1999 and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986, where entire communities had to be abandoned because of surface contamination, and the hopefully unlikelihood of a terrorist dirty nuclear bomb attack. Airborne radon progeny offers an opportunity to study radioisotope surface deposition. A significant annual lung cancer rate is also attributed to airborne radon progeny in the interior domestic environment. Surface deposition rates influence the airborne progeny levels. Here, we report extensive 218Po deposition rates over typical air change rates (ACHs) from 0.02 to 1.0 h-1 for interior furnishings surfaces in a 0.283-m3 test chamber to supplement earlier reported deposition rates for interior wall, ceiling, and floor surfaces. In analyzing the deposition results from the different materials, it is found that they correlate in terms of roughness with relative static friction and aerodynamic shear stress. Extrapolation to perfectly smooth surfaces provides a good estimate of the Fick's law value. Contrary to prior radon analysis at higher air flow, where the Crump and Seinfeld (CS) turbulent deposition models seemed to fit, at low ACH below 0.5 h-1 the deposition data found excellent agreement with a new Brownian diffusive deposition model for laminar flow. A composite model using the Brownian diffusive laminar flow and the CS turbulent flow models provides an excellent fit to all data. These results provide insight into contamination issues relative to other airborne radioisotopes, with the relative effects being dependent on the airborne contaminant particle sizes and their respective diffusion coefficients as seen in the two deposition models.