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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
A. J. Francis, C. R. Iden, B. J. Nine, C. K. Chang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 50 | Number 2 | September 1980 | Pages 158-163
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32541
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several trench leachate samples collected from commercially operated low-level radioactive waste disposal sites at Maxey Flats, Kentucky and at West Valley, New York were analyzed for organic constituents. The organic compounds in the water samples were extracted with methylene chloride, separated into acidic, basic, and neutral fractions, and analyzed by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. About 75 compounds consisting of several straight and branched chain aliphatic acids, aromatic acids, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, amines, aromatic hydrocarbons, esters, ethers, and phenols were identified in the leachate samples. These compounds represent, in general, the synthetic and natural organic wastes such as contaminated cellulosic materials, scintillation liquids, solvents, and decontamination fluids buried in the trenches and their biological decomposition products. The organic compounds, especially the organic acids, phthalates, and tributyl phosphate, may influence the mobility of the radionuclides from the burial trenches by solubilization, leaching, and formation of weak complexes.
